Execution scheduled for man convicted in murders of Cobb real estate agents

A man convicted in 2007 for the murders of two Cobb County real estate agents has been scheduled to be executed in two weeks, the Georgia Department of Corrections announced.

Cobb County Superior Court Chief Judge Ann B. Harris on Monday ordered the GDC to carry out the execution of Stacey Ian Humphreys between noon Dec. 17 and noon Dec. 24. GDC Commissioner Tyrone Oliver scheduled Humphreys’ execution for 7 p.m. Dec. 17 at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.

Humphreys was convicted of killing Lori Brown and Cynthia Williams in November 2003. He shot and killed the two women at the model home sales office of the Oakwind Subdivision in west Cobb County.

Both women worked for Morrison Homes, a builder in the subdivision.

Humphreys, who was on parole at the time of the murders, forced Williams to undress and give up her PIN for her ATM card. He then used her underwear to strangle her before shooting her in the back, according to the Attorney General’s Office.

Brown entered the office and was similarly attacked and murdered by Humphreys, the AG’s office said.

Humphreys was tried and convicted in Brunswick, where the case was moved after pretrial publicity made it too hard to seat a jury in Cobb.

In 2010, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the death penalty imposed against Humphreys. On Oct. 14, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Humphreys’ request to appeal a district court’s decision to deny his federal habeas relief, ending his direct appeal proceedings and state and federal habeas corpus proceedings.

The high court’s decision was split, with the three liberal justices dissenting. In their dissenting opinion, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown wrote that one of the jurors, during the selection process, “misleadingly omitted critical details” of her own experience with a similar crime and “then bullied the other jurors into voting” for the death penalty.

The juror had made up her mind from Day 1 about Humphreys being sentenced to death, even though the 11 other jurors voted for life without parole. In the dissent, justices said deliberations escalated to the point that one juror “took a swing” at the potentially biased juror, others were crying and the foreperson even asked to be removed from the jury because “of the hostile nature of one of the jurors.”

Instead of declaring a mistrial, the trial court instructed the jury to deliberate further and denied a motion for a mistrial by the defense. The jury returned a unanimous verdict of death on the third day.

If executed, Humphreys will become the 55th Georgia inmate put to death by lethal injection.

An agreement between the AG’s office and a group of Georgia capital defense attorneys, put in place in 2021, prevents the state from seeking executions against some death row inmates until after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The state agreed, saying three conditions must be met before they would resume: The statewide judicial emergency in place at the time had to be lifted, normal visitation would resume at state prisons, and the vaccine would be “readily available to all members of the public.”

The vaccine is not yet available to some populations, including babies, so the third condition has still not been met.

The AG’s office tried to back off the agreement and set the execution of convicted killer Virgil Delano Presnell Jr. for May 17, 2022.

Presnell, Georgia’s longest-serving death row prisoner, was sentenced to death in 1976 and again in 1999 after his first sentence was overturned.

The Federal Defender Program filed a suit, leading to Fulton County Superior Court Judge Shermela Williams issuing an injunction halting Presnell’s execution the night before it was set to take place. An appeal was filed by the AG’s office.

In December 2022, a unanimous Georgia Supreme Court condemned Attorney General Chris Carr’s office for backtracking on the agreement and scheduling Presnell’s execution. In its ruling, the state’s high court sided with the Federal Defender Program and Williams, who stayed Presnell’s execution.

Since then, the agreement has been litigated extensively in Fulton County Superior Court.

In June, Judge Shukura Ingram sided with a group of Georgia capital defense attorneys in their efforts to keep at least nine condemned men alive, saying the state agreed to halt most executions until vaccines were available to “all” members of the public, not “some.”

Ingram noted that COVID-19 vaccines are not yet available to people under 6 months of age. The AG’s office is currently appealing that injunction.