A former wife of murderer Steven Spears asked a court on Monday to let her file an appeal on his behalf since he has taken no legal steps to stop his execution for killing his former girlfriend in August 2001.
Only an automatic appeal was filed on Spears’ behalf soon after he was convicted of murder in Lumpkin County in 2007 and sentenced to death. He has not filed anything else to challenge his conviction or death sentence, which is scheduled to be carried out on Wednesday at 7 p.m.
Spears readily admitted he smothered Sherri Holland in her Dahlonega home. And he refused to let his trial attorney present any evidence that might persuade the jury to sentence him to life in prison.
Gwen Thompson — Spears’ third wife and the mother of the youngest of his four daughters — filed a “next friend” petition on Monday in Superior Court in Butts County, where Georgia’s death row is located. An attorney at the Georgia Resource Center, which handles appeals for death row inmates, filed the petition for Thompson.
In legal parlance, a “next friend” is an individual who acts on behalf of another individual who is determined not to have the legal capacity to act on his own.
Psychologist Robert Shaffer, who provided a sworn statement, wrote that there was evidence that "mental illness, rather than any rational decision-making, has compelled him (Spears) thus far to forgo available legal remedies. Thus, next friend status ought to be conferred on Ms. Thompson, and this court should … stay the pending execution."
Thompson asked the court to stop Spears’ execution to allow time to determine whether mistakes were made in his trial. Thompson’s petition said she was stepping in because Spears is mentally ill and does not grasp the consequences if he does not fight for his life.
Spears’ lawyer, Allyn Stockton, was unaware of the petition until told about it by a reporter.
According to the petition, Georgia law says if a person under a death sentence “declines to pursue available post-conviction legal remedies due to a mental disease or defect,” a person who ”has a significant relationship with the death-sentenced person” can pursue an appeal for them.
Thompson’s petition details Spears’ life growing up and his family’s history of mental illness. According to the petition, Spears suffered “overt cruelty and abuse” from his parents and grandmother. His father abandoned the family when he was 7 or 8 years old, leaving them in poverty, the petition states. Thompson wrote that Spears’ classmates teased and bullied him because of his shabby, ill-fitting clothes.
Finally, the Thompson petition states, Spears was essentially sentenced to death “because he is poor and male.”
It is not clear how long Thompson and Spears were married. Their relationship began in 1983. Their daughter was born in 1988, but the filing does not say if they were married at the time. Spears and Holland started dating in 1999, the petition said.
Spears has steadfastly refused to let Stockton, his lawyer, file an appeal. And he would not speak with the State Board of Pardons and Paroles investigator who came to the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison last week for an interview the agency routinely conducts prior to every execution.
On Tuesday, the Parole Board will hear from Holland's family and local authorities who want Spears' sentence carried out. The board will also meet with those who want to save him, even though Spears did not authorize his lawyer to file a clemency petition.
According to the board, those planning to ask for mercy include Spears’ lawyer Stockton, as well as two attorneys and others from the Federal Defender Program.
Stockton said Spears has refused to see him and has not responded to his many letters. The last time Spears and Stockton spoke was March 2015, a court filing states. Stockton said Spears also has refused to see his family, agreeing to a visit only on the day he is to be executed.
Even before his trial, Spears would waver on the question of whether he wanted to be executed.
If Spears, 54, is put to death by lethal injection on Wednesday, he will be the eighth man Georgia has executed since this year, more than any other state in 2016. The last time Georgia carried out as many executions in a year was 1957, when 16 people were put to death.
Spears told investigators in the hours after his arrest that he had warned Holland at the beginning of their relationship that he would kill her if she replaced him. Several months after Holland ended their relationship, Spears plotted her murder by setting up what he needed to kill her in any of four different ways — electrocution, beating, shooting or suffocation.
He ultimately chose suffocation.
He hid in the closet of the bedroom where Holland’s son usually slept. The boy was away that night, spending the weekend with his father.
Spears sneaked out of the closet in the early-morning hours of Aug. 25, 2001, after he was sure Holland was asleep. He choked the 34-year-old single mother until she was unconscious, then smothered her by wrapping duct tape around her face and mouth, placing a plastic bag over her head, and sealing the bag with duct tape.
Spears hid in the woods for 10 days and was picked up as he walked to town to turn himself in.
He willingly told investigators he murdered Holland and said, "If I had to do it again, I'd do it."
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