Twenty years ago, in the Spalding County town of Griffin, Kenneth Fults broke into the home of his 19-year-old next-door neighbor, Cathy Bounds. By his own admission to police, he wrapped 6 feet of electrical tape around Bounds’ eyes, placed her face-down on a bed with a pillow over her head, and as she begged for her life, shot her five times.
At 7:37 p.m. on Tuesday, Fults himself was killed. He became the fourth person Georgia has put to death this year as the state moves at an almost unprecedented pace to carry out executions.
Fults’ execution came relatively early because the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his appeal nearly four hours before 7 p.m. — the scheduled time of his death. Usually the high court doesn’t rule until well past the scheduled hour of punishment.
There was no one in the execution chamber for Fults, so he had no final words for witnesses from the media and the state who had gathered. But he ended the prayer offered by the chaplain with, “Amen.”
A few minutes after the execution drugs began to flow, he twice looked at the IV inserted into his right arm. Moments later, his entire body shook for a few seconds. Then he was still. Fifteen minutes later he was pronounced dead.
With a fifth lethal injection already scheduled, by the end of April the state could tie 2015 and 1987 for the most executions in Georgia in a year. All the while, there is at least one more man on Georgia’s Death Row who has exhausted his appeals and could get an execution date soon.
Only Texas has held more executions this year, six, while Alabama and Florida have each had one.
In the hours before Fults got the needle, he met with a friend, 17 relatives and three members of his legal team. He also ate a steak dinner, but declined to record a final statement.
Outside the Georgia Diagnostics and Classification Prison near Jackson, death penalty opponents held a vigil for the 47-year-old man who was strapped to a gurney in the death chamber about a mile from where they demonstrated.
Akhtar Zain drove to Jackson from Alpharetta to protest the execution and the quickening pace at which they’re being scheduled.
“That’s crazy. They need to stop. It’s a life,” said Zain, 30. “This is bloodthirsty.”
There were 13 protesters, and right at 7 p.m. they formed a circle, led by Mary Catherine Johnson of Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. As Johnson held a photo of Fults, the protesters talked about him and his family, then took turns reading the names and execution dates of the 62 men and one woman put to death in Georgia since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. Afterward, Johnson led the protesters in a short prayer and they sang “Amazing Grace.”
Fults pleaded guilty to murdering Cathy Bounds 20 years ago at the end of a weeklong crime wave. Fults conceded his guilt to investigators and went before a jury only so his sentence could be set. He had hoped jurors would be swayed to give him a life sentence if he admitted what he had done and showed remorse.
Since Fults was black and Bounds was white, prospective jurors were asked if the racial component would sway them. Those seated all said it would not, including juror Thomas Buffington.
But eight years later, an investigator working on Fults’ appeal secured an affidavit from Buffington, who used a racial slur when asked about his vote to sentence Fults to death.
“I don’t know if he (Fults) ever killed anybody, but that (slur) got just what should have happened,” Thomas Buffington, now dead, told an investigator working on Fults’ appeal eight years after the trial. “Once he pled guilty, I knew I would vote for the death penalty because that’s what that (slur) deserved.”
Fults' lawyers used Buffington's affidavit in their fight to prevent Fults from being executed. But state and federal courts declined to consider the issue because, they said, it was raised too late in the process and was "procedurally barred."
Last week, Fults’ lawyers asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution at least until the justices had heard an appeal in a non-capital case in which members of a Colorado jury made derogatory remarks about the defendant because he was Mexican.
Fults’ lawyers argued unsuccessfully that the jury dynamics in the Fults case and the Colorado case are similar.
For a week in January 1996, Fults had been breaking into houses and stealing guns to use to kill his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend. Once, Fults had tried to shoot his rival from an empty apartment near the one where his girlfriend lived, but the gun jammed.
On Jan. 30, 1996, Fults went into his neighbor’s trailer after her live-in boyfriend left for work. Fults wrapped 6 feet of electrical tape around Bounds’ eyes, led her into a bedroom and placed her face-down on a bed with a pillow over her head. As she begged for her life, offering him the rings on her fingers, he shot her five times.
Later, while canvassing the trailer park, police found, under Fults’ trailer, items taken in the previous burglaries. They also found casings from the .22-caliber handgun used to kill Bounds and a letter written in gang code detailing the murder.
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