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Ben Gray / AJC

The gurney used for lethal injections, housed at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, is intended for the state's worst killers.

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DAY ONE

Death still arbitrary

• Of Georgia's 132 most heinous murderers over a recent 10-year span, only 29 of them landed on death row.
• Fifty of the worst killers avoided death by pleading guilty. Some got life sentences and will be eligible for parole.
• A killer's chances of facing the death penalty increased when the victim was white.

The cases | Video: The victim's father

By BILL RANKIN, HEATHER VOGELL, SONJI JACOBS and MEGAN CLARKE

Two men begged a ride from a Wal-Mart shopper in Milledgeville. Minutes later he was dead, shot once in the head. The killers sit on death row.

Two men begged a ride from a college student at a Tifton nightclub. Minutes later he was dead, shot four times in the stomach and chest. The killers are serving life in prison and will be eligible for parole.

Two exceedingly similar crimes, just a few months and 135 miles apart. Two starkly different outcomes.

The murders illustrate what a two-year investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has revealed: Getting the death penalty in Georgia is as predictable as a lightning strike. Thirty-five years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the death penalty nationwide after finding it was arbitrary and capricious in Georgia.

It still is. Reforms that persuaded the high court to reinstate the death penalty have fallen far short of the state's promises, the Journal-Constitution has found.

• Horrible murders are sometimes treated more leniently than lesser crimes. Reginald Acres, for instance, avoided death for viciously stabbing and killing his wife, infant daughter and a pregnant relative. But David Aaron Perkins is on death row for stabbing a drinking buddy and crushing his skull with a whiskey bottle.

• For 25 years, Georgia's Supreme Court has flubbed a critical duty, repeatedly citing cases that had been overturned on appeal to justify other death sentences. (Day Four of this series will explore this issue in depth.)

• More prosecutors and juries are rejecting lethal injection in favor of life without parole. Since 2000, juries have decided against death in two of every three sentencing trials. The trend makes each remaining death sentence more out of step with punishment for similar crimes.

The newspaper's investigation explored the darkest depths of human behavior. Court records told tales of torture, mutilation, child murder — the kinds of cases that give cops and jurors nightmares. They were also, the newspaper found, the kinds that often didn't get the death penalty.

"It's like a roulette wheel," said former Georgia Chief Justice Norman Fletcher. "Arbitrariness is a weakness of the death penalty."

The Journal-Constitution found 1,315 murder cases from 1995 through 2004 that could have been prosecuted for death.

But prosecutors pursued a death sentence for only one in four of those killers. Only one in 23 of them landed on death row.

In that decade, DAs did not seek death for 375 murder cases involving rape, torture or maiming, or multiple killings — circumstances that could warrant a death sentence, the Journal-Constitution found.

Juries sent other killers to death row for crimes that involved a single gunshot and a single victim.

"It would make as much sense just to execute every 10th or every 100th murderer [as] it would be to figure out the rhyme or reason for why we're picking the ones to get the death penalty," said Atlanta defense attorney Jack Martin.

The newspaper, working with University of Maryland criminologist Ray Paternoster, analyzed 10 years of murder convictions. Among the findings:

Geography matters. Killers' sentences often depended on where they killed. A murder in Clayton County, for example, was 13 times more likely to bring death penalty prosecution than a similar crime a few miles away in Fulton.

Race matters, too. Statewide, prosecutors were more than twice as likely to seek death when the victim was white.

The nature of the crime matters. Statewide, the geographic and racial disparities were more pronounced in prosecutors' handling of murders that involved armed robbery.

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Comments

By Sasha

Jun 11, 2008 12:04 PM | Link to this

Compassion and forgiveness. How can you teach this, if that person also gets killed. By all means lock them up but to kill is not setting a good example. I feel for both families. We are all human beings and make mistakes. Consquences follow actions but death is too much.

By Neil

May 29, 2008 9:31 AM | Link to this

A previous comment quoted the Bible's "Thou Shall Not Kill" as a reson not to support capital punishment. However, most Hebrew language scholars agree the literal translation of this commandment is "Thou shall not murder". There's an obvious difference. the Bible is full of examples of killing in justified wars, self-defense, and capital punishment - with no accompanying condemnation but instead, support, for such justified taking of physical life.

By Crystal

May 6, 2008 9:42 AM | Link to this

I think people who kill other people should get killed.

By Crystal

May 6, 2008 9:41 AM | Link to this

I think people who kill other people should get killed.

By By Mary-ann

Apr 17, 2008 9:33 AM | Link to this

I think there should be a death penalty because I am doing homework on it , and I want to win YAYAYAYA :D

By Lala,

Apr 17, 2008 9:29 AM | Link to this

I think there should be death penalty because I am doing homework on it and I want to win.

By nicole

Apr 6, 2008 12:13 PM | Link to this

I just want to say I agree with the ones that say all the families suffer that is true, but people want to give criminals an excuss for everything. Just because you had some sort of trauma, abuse, or neglect does not give anyone the right to hurt another person. I myself was a victom of abuse as a child and yes I still deal with issues from it, but I don't feel like a victom I feel like a survivor. I have a normal life and have never thought to use what I went through as an excuss for anything. Bad things happen but its your nature that decides what your going to do. When will it come that we hold criminals accountible for the crimes they commit? Don't give excusses find solutions.

By Sweetpea

Mar 14, 2008 7:19 PM | Link to this

These people also have innocent christian family who love them dearly and miss them as if they were taken away from us. I know for a fact one of the men listed was raised in a loving family. No he did not have a full time father, but his mother and sister are the best. Yes a hot head short temper, but never murder. Always there when you needed him, always there to make you laugh, to help out with raising your kids. He was one of my best friends ever, and although we will never fully know what happend I pray for those that were murdered's family everyday and yes I am a mother and now a grandmother and my childern are my life and yes even as a christian if someone hurt one of them my first instinct would be to strike back. But who are we to judge? That is for God to do. And who are we to play God. I am not by no means condoning what these people have done but when I read some of these comments I just want someone to read that somewhere in life these people took a wrong turn and now sit on death row and some are very loved and very missed and it is sad all the way around. Sometimes women should not use men trying to get their bills paid and kids raised by someone who adores them and then do unspealable things behind their backs, because love and hurt mixed together makes people go off the edge. Not saying they deserved to die nobody deserves that but there is two sides to a story.

By marcella

Mar 11, 2008 10:28 AM | Link to this

GOD said THOU SHALL NOT KILL.Does that give man the right to take anothers life? Those who committe crimes should be punished,GOD will have his wiay with those who disobeys his laws.

By William Becker

Feb 3, 2008 1:01 PM | Link to this

We should think of those who rape and murder as having committed suicide. Would you kill a man if he tried to rape or kill your son or daughter? Of course you would. So why do we hesitate after the fact? These scumbags did their crime knowing that if caught in the act they would be killed...... therefore they have forfeited their right to life. Why should we consider the value of their life more highly than they do themselves? Easy answer, we shouldn't.

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DAY ONE