Georgia Supreme Court halts Carlton Gary's execution

By Rhonda Cook

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Georgia Supreme Court on Wednesday halted the execution of the so-called Columbus stocking strangler, ordering a judge to hold a hearing and determine whether DNA tests should be conducted to determine Carlton Gary's guilt or innocence.

The court, by a 5-2 vote, said a Muscogee County judge should have convened a hearing to consider Gary's claims. The execution had been scheduled for Wednesday at 7 p.m.

"We are gratified the Supreme Court saw what we always saw -- how could you execute someone if there is DNA that can tell us whether he is in fact guilty," said Gary's lawyer, Jack Martin. "It would have been a sin to execute him without conducting the test."

One Tuesday, the state Board of Pardons and Paroles declined to spare him despite his claims that he would be exonerated by DNA testing of evidence found on the stomach of one of the three elderly women was condemned for murdering.

The Georgia Supreme Court considered a request from Gary's lawyers to test semen left on 69-year-old Martha Thurmond.

“We are prepared to go to the U.S. Supreme Court” if Gary loses before the Georgia Supreme Court, Martin said. “There’s scientific evidence the semen is not his. The bite mark is not his. The footprint is not his. And [it] was never disclosed before. Given that stuff, why not test the DNA.”

Martin said testing would only delay the execution 30 to 60 days.

DNA testing technology was not available in 1986 when Gary was tried for raping Thurmond; Florence Scheible, 89; and Kathleen Woodruff, and then strangling them with their stockings. Prosecutors said he also sexually assaulted and killed four other women from September 1977 to April 1978.

There was trial testimony that there was no blood found in the semen recovered at crime scenes. At the time, a test for the secretion of blood into a defendant's bodily fluids was the most common evidentiary test in sexual assault cases.

Tests of semen recovered from the victims determined the killer was a weak secreter. But a test of Gary’s saliva showed he was a strong secreter.

Other trial evidence against Gary included fingerprints and testimony from one of the women who survived his assault even though she initially said it was too dark to see her attacker’s face.

The so-called stocking strangler terrorized the military town  between the fall of 1977 and spring of 1978, as someone was targeting elderly white women in the Wynnton neighborhood in Columbus. Nine women were attacked and seven were strangled with their stockings.

Gary was liked to the cases when he was arrested in 1984 for burglary and police recovered a pistol that had been taken in October 1977 from the houses one of the stranger's victims. Gary admitted he had broken into houses of eight of the nine victims but he told police a partner named Malvin A. Crittenden committed the rapes and murders. He said he was responsible only for the burglaries. But authorities found no evidence linking Crittenden to the crimes.