A week after Georgia executed a man some thought was innocent, an attorney for another condemned killer is raising questions about his guilt as well.
An attorney for Marcus Ray Johnson, scheduled to be executed Wednesday for a 1994 murder, has filed a motion for a new trial and also is asking that DNA testing be performed on some of the evidence collected in the investigation of the rape and stabbing death of Angela Sizemore.
Attorney Brian Kammer said Wednesday DNA testing was not conducted on several samples because the technology at the time was not as advanced as it is now.
But now, he said, “there is plenty of evidence that could be tested,” Kammer said.
He thinks tests could show Sizemore was attacked by others and not Johnson.
"Knowing him for 12 years now I have felt he could never have done this" Kammer said. "He's always been bitter and angry that he's in prison for something he didn’t do."
Last week, a Daugherty County judge signed a warrant setting a time for Johnson’s execution. It is scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification prison near Jackson.
According to testimony at the trial in 1998, Johnson and Sizemore met at a bar called Fundamentals shortly after midnight the morning of March 24, 1994. She had been to a memorial service several hours earlier and was drinking so heavily that the bartenders stopped serving her. Johnson, angry because another woman had rejected him, was shooting pool when he first saw Sizemore.
Witnesses said Sizemore and Johnson danced, and they were seen in a booth kissing and leaving together.
Johnson said they had sex in a nearby parking lot. He told investigators he and Sizemore got into an argument because she wanted to “snuggle” after the sex and he didn’. He admitted he punched her in the nose, but Johnson said he didn’t kill Sizemore.
Sizemore was found later that morning in her white Suburban parked behind an east Albany apartment complex. She had been sodomized, raped and stabbed 41 times.
Investigators found a drop of blood on the leather jacket Johnson was wearing that morning. Kammer said there should have been more blood given the number of times Sizemore was stabbed.
Investigators also said Johnson’s pocket knife was consistent with the weapon that was used to stab Sizemore, but they did not find any blood on it.
Kammer said most of the evidence against Johnson was eyewitness testimony, which can be unreliable.
“There are lots of problems with the eyewitness testimony in this case.” Kammer said.
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