Just days after the highly controversial execution of Kelly Gissendaner, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for more Georgia inmates to be put to death by lethal injection.
The high court this week, on the first day of its October term, rejected appeals from three condemned murderers, which means state prosecutors can seek execution warrants at any time for seven men whose appeals have now been denied.
"Because of all the litigation and questions about lethal injection, there's been a backlog of cases here in Georgia," said Atlanta lawyer Jack Martin, who has defended numerous death-penalty cases. "Now it looks like the floodgates are open. We're going to have to see if we're comfortable with executing someone just about every other week or so."
Gissendaner became the third person executed by Georgia this year, but there had been an eight-month lull since two inmates — Andrew Brannan and Warren Hill — were put to death by lethal injection in January.
Gissendaner, executed on the last day of September, was the first woman put to death in Georgia in decades.
But Brandon Astor Jones, one of the three condemned men whose appeal was denied this week, also holds a death-row distinction. Find out what it is — and why he and the others are facing the needle — on our premium website, MyAJC.com.
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