DEL.ICIO.USDEATH ROW WATCH: Ex-jurors join plea for mercy
Killer scheduled to die Tuesday
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, September 14, 2008
For almost 3 1/2 decades —- longer than any other man in Georgia —- Jack Alderman has waited on death row to be executed for murdering his wife for her insurance.
That day is expected to come Tuesday, when Alderman, 57, could become the 20th person put to death in Georgia by lethal injection.
Jack Alderman faces lethal injection for killing his wife in 1974. His accomplice served only 12 years.
Sept. 19, 1974: Barbara Alderman is murdered in her apartment in Garden City near Savannah.
June 14, 1975: A Chatham County jury sentences Jack Alderman to death. Murder accomplice John Arthur Brown testifies for the prosecution.
Dec. 4, 1975: Another Chatham jury sentences Brown to death for his role in the murder. His sentence was overturned later.
Dec. 4, 1978: Brown is resentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Jan. 10, 1983: A federal appeals court vacates Alderman's death sentence. Orders new sentencing trial.
April 1, 1984: A second Chatham jury sentences Alderman to death; Brown testifies again for the prosecution.
March 9, 1987: The state Board of Pardons and Paroles grants Brown parole, releasing him from prison.
Jan. 31, 1994: The parole board commutes Brown's life sentence for murder, meaning he no longer was on parole.
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As is usual in the days preceding an execution, his lawyers are filing with the courts one more time, and they are begging the parole board to hear their pleas for mercy despite the crude, vicious nature of the 1974 murder of Barbara Jean Alderman in Chatham County —- in which her husband choked her after his accomplice bludgeoned her with a foot-long crescent wrench.
The lawyers point out the differences in the sentences for Alderman and co-defendant John Arthur Brown, who helped kill Barbara Alderman to get half of her $10,000 life insurance. Brown was sentenced to life and eventually was paroled and had his sentence commuted.
Alderman’s lawyers have given the board affidavits from five of the jurors who convicted Alderman in his second trial, in 1984. They now say they want him spared.
“It’s a pretty compelling case for clemency,” said Alderman’s attorney, Michael Siem. “Mr. Alderman is a man of faith and throughout his [nearly] 35 years on death row has been a mentor and a peacemaker. He has earned the opportunity for the board to hear from his supporters.”
But the parole board declined to give them an audience, saying its members had all the information they needed. They had taken a closer look at Alderman’s case last summer, when he was then scheduled to die. That execution was called off when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the constitutionality of lethal injection in a Kentucky case.
To push the board, supporters of the condemned inmate took out a full-page ad Thursday in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, urging the members to look at Alderman again because “decency and justice demand that he be heard.”
Reviewing injection
At the same time, Alderman’s attorney has continued in the courts to challenge Georgia’s procedures for lethal injection. The federal appeals court recently rejected the argument that Alderman could suffer unnecessarily if he is not adequately sedated with the first of a three-drug cocktail before the deadly second and third drugs are administered.
Now they are asking the Supreme Court to look again at lethal injection, a method the court upheld earlier this year in the Kentucky case.
Should the Tuesday evening execution go forward, Alderman’s lawyer has made the unusual request that the Department of Corrections require that the attending nurse in the death chamber confirm Alderman is unconscious before the second drug, a muscle relaxer, is administered.
Different sentences
According to testimony, Brown beat Barbara Jean Alderman with the crescent wrench. Then, he and Jack Alderman choked her and put her underwater in a bathtub to be sure she was dead.
To make it appear that she died in a car accident, the two men left her body in a creek. Jack Alderman later said that he found his wife’s body that night but was so traumatized he forgot to tell anyone.
In 1975, the two men were tried and convicted and initially were sentenced to die, but those jury decisions were overturned. Alderman was tried again in 1984, and he was again condemned. Brown was sentenced to life in prison.
Though Brown twice testified against Alderman, all along prosecutors have insisted there was no agreement Brown would get life in exchange, which would have been required to be disclosed to defense attorneys. (Brown signed an affidavit in 1998 saying a deal was not explicit, but it was implied.)
In 1987, 12 years after he first went to prison under a death sentence, Brown was paroled. And in 1994, the parole board decided Brown no longer required parole supervision. The Georgia board commuted Brown’s murder sentence to time served despite a 1988 investigation into allegations he molested two teenage girls; no charges were brought in that case. In 2000, Brown died a free man in New York.
The family of Barbara Alderman bitterly opposed the leniency for Brown. They still want Jack Alderman executed. Debra Blase, the victim’s sister, told the Journal-Constitution this year that they had waited long enough.
But attorney Siem said Alderman should not be executed because of Brown’s testimony, considering the molestation allegations and reports from Brown’s former wife that he was a tormented, abusive and violent man. Siem said Brown was not credible, and the two men’s punishments were unequal.
“If there was ever an individual where the state had the option to choose life rather than death,” Siem said, “this is it.”
TIMELINE
Sept. 19, 1974: Barbara Alderman is murdered in her apartment in Garden City near Savannah.
June 14, 1975: A Chatham County jury sentences Jack Alderman to death. Murder accomplice John Arthur Brown testifies for the prosecution.
Dec. 4, 1975: Another Chatham jury sentences Brown to death for his role in the murder. His sentence was overturned later.
Dec. 4, 1978: Brown is resentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Jan. 10, 1983: A federal appeals court vacates Alderman’s death sentence. Orders new sentencing trial.
April 1, 1984: A second Chatham jury sentences Alderman to death; Brown testifies again for the prosecution.
March 9, 1987: The state Board of Pardons and Paroles grants Brown parole, releasing him from prison.
Jan. 31, 1994: The parole board commutes Brown’s life sentence for murder, meaning he no longer was on parole.
