The Georgia Supreme Court on Friday threw out the conviction and death sentence of a man who rode a bicycle to the house of a Macon County bank vice president and killed him in 1999.
The justices agreed that Artemus Rick Walker was mentally ill and incompetent to go on trial for murder.
The unanimous decision referenced the findings of an expert that Walker began to show delusional kinds of psychotic behavior when he was 18 or 19. He was 33 when Lynwood Ray Gresham was stabbed to death in his yard.
The justices wrote that the attorneys apparently were concerned about Walker’s mental health because they hired a psychologist to examine him. Walker refused to cooperate, and his attorneys abandoned their efforts to have his mental health evaluated. The justices wrote the outcome of the case against Walker most likely would have been different if Walker’s lawyers used his mental health as a defense.
The outcome of the case against Walker most likely would have been different had his lawyers at trial and in the first round of appeals raised his mental health as a defense, the justices said.
Gresham was vice president of the bank next door to a service station Walker owned.
According to testimony, Walker devised a plan to rob Gresham and tried to recruit a new employee at his station, Gary Lee Griffin, to help him. Witnesses said Walker and Griffin rode their bikes to Gresham’s house on May 12, 1999.
Walker told Griffin to wait at the side of the house while he tried to get Gresham outside. Griffin refused to help once Walker and Gresham began to struggle.
Eventually, Walker stabbed Gresham 12 times in the chest and back and then dragged him to some bushes, where he died. Walker used Gresham’s keys to try to get inside where Gresham’s wife and daughter had barricaded themselves.
Walker and Griffin rode away on their bikes when the daughter yelled through the door that she had a gun.
Griffin was arrested nearby after he crashed his bike. Police found Walker a few hours later, hiding in some nearby woods. Gresham’s blood was on Walker’s clothes, and Walker had Gresham’s house keys.
A Macon County jury convicted Walker in 2002 of malice murder, felony murder, armed robbery, aggravated assault, attempted burglary and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. He was sentenced to death plus a life term and 35 years in prison.
The state Supreme Court upheld Walker’s conviction in 2007 when he made a direct appeal, but it overturned the conviction Friday when his attorneys appealed on the basis that mistakes were made in the trial.
Griffin is serving life in prison.
In an appeal hearing, his mother, brother and sister said Walker slipped into increasingly psychoticlike behavior in his late teens. He became obsessed with religion. They testified that he would fast for 40 days at a time and slip notes under the door letting them know when he needed honey, milk or water, which was all he consumed.
His brother testified that Walker planned to create a “big ministry” named “King of Kings,” and he began wearing a robe to church and carrying a tall wooden staff.
One woman from the church testified during the hearing that Walker was at first “kind of like the golden child,” but he became an angry, threatening, strange man who stalked her and told her she had been appointed by God to be his wife. A church pastor and childhood friend said Walker was a “dynamic” youth preacher when he was 16 or 17, but he changed and began to give sermons people “just didn’t understand.”
The bishop at the church said Walker stopped the organist from playing and then spoke to the congregation.
“Artemus then announced that he learned, directly from God, that I was a false prophet and that my wife was the Witch of Hindu,” the bishop testified, according to the Supreme Court’s ruling Friday. “He went on to say that God told him that he was supposed to take over control of my church. Artemus’ behavior was very bizarre and we escorted him out.”
Other witnesses provided information about Walker’s mental state shortly before the murder.
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