The state Board of Pardons and Paroles has decided to wait until Wednesday to decide whether to stop the scheduled execution of Steven Spears for the 2001 murder of his ex-girlfriend.
He is scheduled to be executed at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
Though Spears did not authorize his lawyer to file a petition for clemency, the attorney and others still met with the board for about three hours Tuesday to ask for mercy. In the afternoon, the five-member board heard from the Lumpkin County district attorney and some of Sherri Holland's relatives who want to see him put to death for her murder.
An automatic appeal, which comes with every death sentence, was filed after he was convicted in 2007, and the Georgia Supreme Court rejected it in February 2015. Since then, Spears has not taken any steps to challenge his conviction or his sentence. The last time he communicated with his lawyer was in March 2015. Since then he has refused to meet with attorneys and he has ignored their letters.
Spears' third ex-wife, Gwen Thompson, filed a "next friend" petition to stop his execution and allow time for a court to review his case. The petition, brought with the help of the Georgia Resource Center, which represents death row inmates, said Thompson can file it because she "has a significant relationship with the death-sentenced person" who has declined to pursue all possible legal remedies.
The state’s lawyers wrote in opposition to the petition that there was no evidence Thompson had a relationship with Spears, noting that she had not visited him since his imprisonment.
That court issue is also pending.
Spears has said since before his trial that he wanted the death penalty. He would not let his lawyers present any evidence that might persuade a jury to sentence him to life in prison. And he has refused to authorize any appeals.
Spears readily admitted that he suffocated Holland, a 34-year-old single mother, during the early morning hours of Aug. 25, 2001, the weekend she was planning to go on her first date since ending her relationship with Spears.
Spears told investigators he had warned her when they started dating in 1999 that he would kill her if she ever left him.
A few months after they broke up, Spears hid in a closet in her son’s bedroom for about four hours, until he was sure Holland was asleep. He woke her and then choked her unconscious. Spears killed her by wrapping her face with duct tape, putting a plastic bag over her head and securing the end with more tape.
Spears hid in the woods for 10 days after he murdered Holland. A Lumpkin County deputy picked up Spears as he was walking to town to surrender.
He confessed right away.
“If I had to do it again, I’d do it,” Spears told investigators.
If he is executed, Spears, 54, will be the eighth person Georgia has put to death in 2016, more than any other state this year. It also will be the most inmates the state has executed in a year since 1957, when 16 people were electrocuted.
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