The fate of Troy Anthony Davis weighed on Cobb County death penalty defendant Joshua Drucker as his trial neared.
It remains to be seen whether it will weigh on the minds of jurors, too.
Court-watchers say a backlash against the death penalty in Georgia could make it harder for prosecutors to get the ultimate punishment for Drucker if he is convicted. Drucker is on trial for the April 5, 2004, shootings of an acquaintance and his girlfriend.
His attorneys hope to convince a jury Drucker doesn’t deserve to die. But they don’t know if Davis’ case will help or hurt, if it affects jurors at all.
“You never know,” said defense attorney Jimmy Berry, who is representing Drucker and has handled about 50 other death penalty cases over his long career.
“My opinion is that the death penalty is pretty archaic,” Berry said. “We are the only civilized country that still has it.”
The Davis case garnered national media attention when he was executed Sept. 21 for the 1989 murder of Savannah police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail. Prosecutors expressed faith in the guilty verdict, but Davis supporters pointed to a number of witnesses who recanted their trial testimony to bolster their claim that he had been wrongly convicted.
In the dramatic moments before he received the lethal injection, Davis proclaimed his innocence one last time from the death chamber gurney.
Jury selection in the Drucker case was in its second week when Davis was executed. Two potential jurors brought up the controversy. One said they were “a little more concerned about the death penalty now and whether it was appropriate,” Berry said. Neither of those individuals was ultimately picked for the jury.
Thomas Clegg has been on both sides of a death penalty trial as a former DeKalb County prosecutor and as a defense attorney. He said he would not be surprised if Davis’ case affects some jurors.
“If there was any sort of doubt in my mind, even if it didn’t rise to a level of reasonable doubt, I would not vote and I don’t think most jurors would want to vote for it,” Clegg said. “I would think a lot of jurors have a bad feeling in their mouth about the death penalty. I know I do.”
Jerry Word, who heads the Georgia Capital Defender Office, also believes the Drucker jury could be impacted by Davis’ execution.
“It makes jurors realize that we do execute people, and sometimes the evidence can be questioned even after someone is found guilty,” Word said.
Cobb County District Attorney Pat Head said he has no hesitation about seeking the death penalty if the facts of the case warrant it. Drucker’s case qualified because it was a double homicide and because it was excessively cruel and inhuman, Head said.
During the trial, which began Sept. 28 and is expected to last about a month, jurors have seen gruesome crime scene photographs of David Andrew Robertson, 40, and his girlfriend, Lora Nikolova, 25. The pair were found shot to death in Robertson’s home near Marietta.
Drucker, 33, once served as a youth minister at the church his father formerly pastored, Gospel Outreach Church in Stockbridge.
Drucker allegedly became addicted to methamphetamine, and he spent several years in and out of prison for first-degree forgery and an assault on a girlfriend.
He is accused of shooting Robertson after telling a friend, Melissa McCrayer, that they were going to Robertson’s house to buy drugs.
McCrayer cried on the witness stand this week when she described the slayings. She said Drucker turned his gun on Nikolova when she started hitting at him and shouting, “You killed him, you killed him.”
Nikolova was on all fours, spitting up blood, when Drucker allegedly dispatched her with a final, fatal gunshot wound to the head.
Drucker told detectives in a videotaped confession that he killed Robertson because he had given Drucker’s sister drugs that caused her to overdose in February 2003. She suffered severe brain damage and is now confined to a wheelchair.
Head said he is confident the jury will convict Drucker. “There is no doubt whatsoever that he committed the crime.”
Cobb County residents are considered primarily conservative, which has helped Head’s office obtain the death penalty three times since he became district attorney in 1998.
Andrew Grant DeYoung was the most recent defendant from Cobb to be put to death for murdering his parents and his 14-year-old sister in 1993. He was executed in July.
In July 2008, Lawrence Rice was the last person to be convicted in a death penalty case in Cobb. Eight people on death row in Georgia were convicted in Cobb.
The district attorney said it would be a shame if jurors opted not to vote for the death penalty in Drucker’s case because of Davis.
Head said he read the 102-page order issued by the federal judge in Davis’ appeal, and it was clear to him the judge had “no doubt whatsoever” about Davis’ guilt.
“The people who have pushed the Troy Davis case really didn’t know a thing about it,” Head said. “They just know what they’ve been told.”
Drucker operates an Internet ministry from jail with the help of his fiancee. He writes sermons posted on his website, TodayChristianMinistries .org.
In a sermon dated July 18, Drucker drew a parallel between Davis and the biblical figure of Joseph, who was sold into slavery and wrongly imprisoned before he rose to become one of the most powerful men in Egypt. Joseph was also known to interpret dreams. Drucker said Davis must have been kept alive by his dreams. He exhorted readers to keep dreaming.
Drucker’s sermons have never discussed what ultimately happened to Davis. But he ended that sermon by reflecting on his then upcoming trial:
“As I pen these words, I myself am facing an IMPOSSIBLE situation,” Drucker wrote. “I have been locked up since April of 2004 for double murder in Cobb County, Georgia. And I am waiting for a death penalty trial. And my lawyers (which are the best in this state) tell me daily that there is no way I’ll ever be free. I refuse to accept.”
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In his own words
Joshua Drucker writes sermons in jail that appear at TodayChristianMinistries.org. Some excerpts:
About his hopes: “Everyday, I get out of the bed and hope for my freedom.”
Expressing disappointment in his trial being delayed from July to September: “Not only am I tired, but my family is tired as well. Tired of waiting, tired of all the legal meetings, and most of all tired of not knowing what will become of me and my future.”
About his decision to start an Internet ministry after he said God spoke to him: “I thought to myself, ‘An Internet ministry? Why? How?’ As my Spirit was rejoicing, my mind was yelling — ‘You are crazy. You are in prison. No one is going to listen.’ ... I then told God, ‘Lord, if this is your will, then I will leave it up to you to make it happen.’”
His thoughts as his trial neared: “I am exactly 36 hours away from the biggest day of my life. As I pen these words, today is Saturday, Sept. 9, 2011. It is about 9 p.m., and I have just come back to my cell after watching college football for most of the day. I chose to watch football ALL DAY so that my mind would not be consumed with this trial. For the most part, it has helped. Today has been a good day.”
His thoughts on jury selection: “ It has gone EXTREMELY SMOOTH so far and I am looking forward to better days ahead.”
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