Judge weighs halting execution under new Georgia law

A novel, last minute-effort to spare the life of a condemned Georgia prisoner could delay the man’s execution, currently scheduled for Wednesday night.

Cobb Superior Court Judge Tyler Browning said he would review filings and arguments made by both sides before deciding if Stacey Ian Humphreys is entitled to a hearing on his resentencing request.

Humphreys’ defense attorneys argued Tuesday the death row prisoner should not be executed because years of childhood physical and sexual abuse led to him killing two people, citing a new Georgia law signed in May 2025.

“This is such a new statute. Case law is scant,” Browning said from the bench. “I will have a written order out today on the right to a hearing.”

The hearing would address the underlying question about whether the new law should be applied to Humphreys.

Humphreys’ defense team presented the novel arguments in a last-ditch effort to spare their client’s life. The hearing was held hours before four members of the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles voted to deny clemency. The board does not disclose vote tallies or say how its members sided.

They based their motion on Georgia’s new Survivor Justice Act, which allows judges to use discretion when sentencing victims of abuse who are convicted of crimes.

“Mr. Humphreys endured years of arbitrary beatings, whippings, he was burned with cigarettes,” Humphreys’ attorney, Brian Kammer told a Cobb judge. “He suffered a skull fracture at age 3 and his parents withheld treatment for that.”

Kammer said Humphreys was exposed to domestic violence and substance abuse throughout his childhood, and he was sexually abused by his paternal great-grandmother “for many years.”

That abuse severely damaged Humphreys’ mental health and ultimately led to his criminal behavior as an adult, Kammer argued.

State prosecutors contend the Georgia law at the center of Humphreys’ argument is intended to protect those accused of killing or harming their abusers, not someone facing the death penalty for murdering two strangers more than two decades ago.

They said the 53-year-old’s execution should proceed as planned.

Convicted of killing two people, Stacey Ian Humphreys is scheduled to die Wednesday by lethal injection. (Andy Sharp/AJC 2003)

Senior Assistant Attorney General Sabrina Graham said Humphreys’ defense team is effectively using the new law to ask the judge to commute two death sentences for two malice murder convictions.

“The purpose was for people who were subject to abuse by the victims that they harmed,” Graham said. “It was not to give people another chance to produce mitigating evidence that they already presented at trial and then ask the judge to resentence them based on that.”

She said the state Legislature never intended the Survivor Justice Act to be used in this way. Graham also said that in her more than two decades of trying death penalty cases, virtually every defendant has argued that family abuse and mental disorders contributed in some way to the crimes.

Humphreys was convicted and sentenced to death nearly two decades ago for the 2003 killings of Cyndi Williams and Lori Brown, who were strangled and then shot to death in the model home of a Powder Springs subdivision.

Graham said Humphreys’ argument to apply the law to his case “creates a new exception to the death penalty.”

She argued the state lawmakers who crafted the bill never intended for death row inmates to use it to commute their sentences to life in prison.

But Humphreys’ attorneys said the way the law is written does not exclude him from claiming abuse was a significant contributing factor in his crimes.

“Your honor, it says what it says,” Kammer told the judge.

Graham said if the hearing is granted, the AG’s office would support the defense’s motion to stay Wednesday’s execution. That would allow her office time to appeal the decision and prepare for the hearing.

Outside the courtroom, defense attorney Nathan Potek said he believes the new law applies to his client.

There’s no exclusion or limitation laid out in the statute, Potek said.