Attorneys for Brandon Astor Jones on Monday will slip into a board room on the fifth floor of a state government office tower to argue, in private, that the 72-year-old condemned murderer should be spared the death penalty.
Later in the day, the daughter and widow of the man Jones murdered will ask the State Board of Pardons and Paroles to let this execution for the 1979 murder of Roger Tackett go forward as scheduled.
“I know he’s old and he’s the longest serving person serving on Death Row,” said Katie Tackett King, who was 7 when her dad was murdered early Father’s Day almost 37 years ago. “But I also believe there is justice for wrongs, especially egregious wrongs, and you can’t let them go.”
Jones is scheduled to be executed Tuesday at 7 p.m, 11 days before his 73rd birthday. If he is put to death, Jones will be the oldest person Georgia has ever executed.
The chances that the parole board will show mercy are not good; the board has only commuted a death sentence to life only five times since 2002.
In the Cobb County murder of Tackett, both Jones and his co-defendant, Van Roosevelt Solomon, were sentenced to die. Solomon was executed 30 years ago. But Jones has lingered on death row. A federal judge ordered him re-sentenced because the original jury had a Bible in the room during deliberations.
Jones is the first man Georgia has scheduled for execution this year. There are at least four others who have exhausted their regular state and federal appeals and could see their lethal injections scheduled over the next few weeks or months. Last year, Georgia put to death four men and a woman, the largest number of executions carried out in the state over a 12 month period since 1987.
It was 36 years ago that Jones and Solomon came upon Tackett at a Tenneco grocery store and gas station on Delk Road. The 35-year-old manager had stayed after closing to finish paperwork so he could attend Father’s Day mass with his wife and daughter.
Jones and Solomon had Tackett in the storeroom when Cobb County police officer Roy Kendall pulled up. He was helping a stranded motorist who needed a ride to the store to use a pay phone outside and heard the shots. The officer found Jones and Solomon still in the Tenneco’s store room.
“It was just by chance that we discovered who committed the crime or it might have gone unsolved,” said Cobb Court administrator Tom Charron, who was Cobb’s district attorney when Jones was convicted and re-sentenced. “I just felt this was such a senseless, cruel killing.”
Jones lawyers argued in their clemency Jones deserves mercy.
“He is profoundly remorseful for his actions,” the lawyers wrote. “If spared, Mr. Jones can continue to serve as a mentor and grandfather to his many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”
He has 18 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren, some of whom he’s never met.
They also write he should be spared because Solomon, not Jones, fired the bullet that killed Tackett. “Jones stood by in utter shock as the bullets seem to ricochet all around them in the crowded space,” they wrote.
Prosecutors, however, never determined who made the fatal shot. Both men had gunshot residue on their hands and they blamed each other.
Jones’ lawyers have also raised the issue of proportionality, writing that the death sentence for this crime is unfair. They say death sentences are not often given for murders committed during an armed robbery.
Finally, the clemency petition stresses his age; Jones is about to turn 73. They say Jones is old and has dementia. and he has suffered mentally and emotionally from watching about 60 other inmates go to their deaths.
“Mr. Jones has been burdened not only by the threat of his own potential execution, but the ever-present threat to the lives of his friends and other men on his cell block,” the clemency application says.
Tackett’s daughter is unmoved by those arguments.
“My gosh. Everybody has their stuff,” King said. “It makes me kind of sick to think someone uses anything bad that’s happened in their life as an excuse not just for bad behavior but for horrific behavior.”
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