After the difficult meeting with the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, the call that broke the hearts of the Evans family came even before the small group had time to drive back from Atlanta to their Dawson County homes.
Angela DeCoursey was driving when she took the call to get news that the man convicted of murdering her brother, Keith Evans, 23 years ago would not be executed Thursday night as scheduled.
The phone call came just before it was announced to the public that the board had granted clemency to Tommy Lee Waldrip. His death sentenced was commuted to life without parole.
All DeCoursey can remember from that brief conversation is someone saying “that they had changed the sentence and there would be no execution,” she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Thursday.
For years the Evans family had avoided making public statements or giving media interviews, drawing support from friends as the case went through state and federal appeals.
But on Thursday they wanted people to know “we are in shock and disbelief that this is the outcome.
“We feel that the justice system failed Keith,” DeCoursey said, speaking for her parents and younger sister. “They failed to protect him. They knew he was being threatened. We feel like the justice system has failed him again.”
Twenty-six hours before Waldrip was to be executed at 7 p.m. Thursday, the state Board of Pardons and Paroles announced its rare decision to commute his sentence to life without parole. It was the fifth time since 2002 that the board has commuted a death sentence.
Just a few hours before, the Evans family had met with the five-man board to ask that the execution be carried out.
The board does not give a reason for its decision. But one issue before the board was that the sentences for Waldrip, his son and the senior Waldrip’s brother-in-law, all convicted of murdering Evans on April 13, 1991, were not proportional.
The three men were tried separately, with prosecutors asking for the death penalty for the two Waldrips. Only Tommy Lee Waldrip was sentenced to die. John Mark Waldrip and his uncle, Howard Livingston, are serving life sentences.
“I think all three deserved the death penalty,” DeCoursey said. “It’s a gruesome, horrible death they put my brother through.”
DeCoursey was 19 when her brother’s killers were tried so she remembers those events clearly. Evans doted on his then 16-month-old niece, “his pride and joy.” And he was protective of his two younger sisters.
Her 23-year-old brother was studying accounting at Gainesville State College and working full time at night at the Food Center in Cumming while still living at home.
The chain of events started in 1990 when Evans testified in an armed robbery case against John Mark Waldrip. “Keith was the only one who would testify. None of the others would,” DeCoursey said.
But the jury couldn’t reach a verdict so a second trial was set. Evans was scheduled to testify on April 15, 1991.
DeCoursey said the younger Waldrip had threatened her brother in the days leading up to the second trial just as he had intimidated another witness who was to testify in the retrial.
While Evans never told the family he was nervous, he did ask his grandfather for advice.
According to DeCoursey, “Grandpa” told her brother “you can’t go wrong when you speak the truth.” After her brother was killed, she said, Lloyd Vaughters blamed himself until the day he died 18 years later in 2009 at the age of 84.
Evans was driving home from work two days before the second trial was to start when the Waldrips and Livingston intercepted him. According to testimony, they ran Evans’ truck off the road and then Evans was hurt when the younger Waldrip hit him with bird shot. John Mark Waldrip and Livingston took the truck, with Evans in the passenger seat, and the elder Waldrip followed in his wife’s Ford Tempo.
In Dawson County, John Mark Waldrip beat Evans to death with a black jack and then they buried him in neighboring Gilmer County. Deputies found the insurance card for the Tempo, on the ground near Evans’ burned truck.
“We’ve had to relive every detail of his death again,” DeCoursey said of Wednesday’s hearing. “We never felt like we had any rights at all, for 23 years.”
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