State prosecutors and lawyers from the state Attorney General's Office, backed by most families of the victims, have argued before the courts and the State Board of Pardons and Paroles that each of the ten people to be executed since the beginning of 2015 committed heinous crimes that deserved the ultimate punishment. State and federal judges rejected the inmates' appeals and the parole board, after conducting clemency hearings, allowed the executions to proceed.
Brian Kammer, who heads the Georgia Resource Center, which represented many of the inmates put to death, said he believed the parole board should have halted some of the executions. "What is disturbing to me is that we have had numerous cases that were strong candidates for clemency, including those featuring undisputed evidence of intellectual disability, undisputed evidence of combat trauma-induced PTSD that was directly implicated in the crime, strong evidence of actual innocence, or otherwise powerful redeeming qualities," he said.
Andrew Brannan
Age: 66
Execution date: Jan. 13, 2015
Crime committed: Jan. 12, 1998 in Laurens County
Aggravating: After being pulled over for driving 98 miles an hour, Brannan began scampering around and yelling at Deputy Kyle Dinkheller, who repeatedly tried to talk Brannan down. "Here I am! Shoot my (expletive) ass," Brannan yelled, according to the recordings from a camera mounted on the squad car and a microphone worn by Dinkheller. Brannan then retreated to his truck, pulled out a .30 caliber M1 rifle and shot Dinkheller at least nine times.
Mitigating: A number of combat veterans, including a brigadier general, told the parole board that Brannan was a Vietnam veteran who'd earned a Bronze Star and two medals of commendation. He was also permanently disabled from post-traumatic stress disorder and was not taking his medication for bipolar disorder on the day he killed Dinkheller, court filings said.
Warren Hill
Age: 54
Execution date: Jan. 27, 2015
Crime committed: Aug. 11, 1990 in Lee County
Aggravating: Already serving a life sentence for the 1986 killing of his former girlfriend, Hill beat a sleeping Joseph Handspike to death with a nail-studded board. Hill claimed that Handspike, a fellow inmate, had made an unwanted sexual advance.
Mitigating: Three state experts who initially testified Hill was faking his intellectual disabilities later changed their diagnoses. In sworn statements, they described their evaluations 13 years before as rush jobs and said a better understanding today of mental disabilities led them to believe Hill had mild retardation and was ineligible to be executed.
Kelly Gissendaner
Age: 47
Execution date: Sept. 30, 2015
Crime committed: Feb. 7, 1997 in Gwinnett County
Aggravating: Gissendaner planned the murder of her husband and got her lover, Gregory Owen, to carry it out. Owens eventually pleaded guilty to kidnapping Douglas Gissendaner, knocking him unconscious and then repeatedly stabbing him in the neck. He testified Kelly Gissendaner said death was the only way to get her husband out of her life and still collect his life insurance.
Mitigating: Gissendaner's lawyers argued that her late husband's actual killer got a sentence of life with the possibility of parole. Also, a number of former female convicts who served time with Gissendaner credited her with giving them hope and helping them turn their lives around by ministering to them.
Marcus Johnson
Age: 50
Execution date: Nov. 19, 2015
Crime committed: March 24, 1994 in Dougherty County
Aggravating: Prosecutors said Johnson met his victim, Angela Sizemore, at an Albany bar and had sex with her in a vacant lot. Prosecutors said Johnson then stabbed Sizemore 41 times. Her body was later found in her white Suburban parked on the other side of town and witnesses said they saw Johnson walking away from the area where the Suburban was abandoned.
Mitigating: Johnson may not have been the person who killed Sizemore, his lawyers argued. They noted that Johnson always admitted having sex with an inebriated Sizemore the night of her death, but denied murdering her. Court filings said there should have been a substantial amount of blood on Sizemore's killer, yet not a single drop was found on Johnson's jacket.
Brian Keith Terrell
Age: 47
Execution date: Dec. 9, 2015
Crime committed: June 22, 1992 in Newton County
Aggravating: Terrell was sentenced to death for the murder of 70-year-old John Watson, from whom Terrell stole about $8,700. According to court records, Watson and Terrell's mother were friends and after discovering his money had been stolen, Watson told her he would not press charges if Terrell returned a significant amount of the money. Instead, prosecutors said, Terrell ambushed and Watson and then beat him to death after he left his home one morning for a dialysis appointment.
Mitigating: Terrell's first trial ended in a mistrial when jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict as to whether he was guilty. According to court filings, Terrell was convicted during his retrial primarily on the testimony of his cousin, Jermaine Johnson, who made a deal with prosecutors in exchange for his cooperation. Johnson later told defense investigators that he was pressured by police and prosecutors into giving false testimony against Terrell, according to court files.
Brandon Astor Jones
Age: 72
Execution date: Feb. 3, 2016
Crime committed: June 16, 1979 in Houston County
Aggravating: Jones and co-defendant Van Roosevelt Solomon, who has since been executed, were condemned to die for the murder of Roger Tackett at a Tenneco grocery store and gas station on Delk Road. The 35-year-old manager had stayed after closing to finish up paperwork when he was shot to death during an armed robbery. A police officer who heard the shots entered the store and found Jones and Solomon in the store room.
Mitigating: Jones suffered from childhood trauma and mental illness, according to court filings. He told his defense attorneys that he had been sexually abused by an older female cousin when he was five years old and that his uncle gave him severe beatings. He was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder and decreased brain function, filings said.
Travis Hittson
Age: 45
Execution date: Feb. 17, 2016
Crime committed: April 4, 1992 in Houston County
Aggravating: Hittson, a Navy sailor, killed fellow sailor Conway Utterbeck at the urging of his lead petty officer, Edward Vollmer, while the three men were on leave. After Vollmer and Hittson went out drinking one night, Vollmer gave Hittson a baseball bat and told him to go inside and hit Utterbeck to incapacitate him. Hittson found Utterbeck asleep on a recliner and struck him repeatedly on the head. Vollmer then handed a pistol to Hittson and told him to shoot Utterbeck. Hittson did as instructed and fatally shot Utterbeck in the forehead, court records say. Hittson and Vollmer later cut up Utterbeck's body and buried the remains in different places.
Mitigating: Hittson's lawyers said Vollmer exercised unnatural dominance and control over Hittson and manipulated him into killing Utterbeck. Clemency filings said Hittson was extremely remorseful for what he did, had a terrible drinking problem and was an awkward and naïve young man who was always trying to please others. Vollmer was allowed to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence.
Joshua Bishop
Age: 41
Execution date: March 31, 2016
Crime committed: June 25, 1994 in Baldwin County
Aggravating: Bishop was sentenced to die for killing Leverett Morrison by hitting him with a car battery and beating him on the head with a curtain rod during a fight over car keys. Bishop also confessed that he and his co-defendant, Mark Braxley, killed another man two weeks before Morrison's death. The men said they killed Ricky Lee Wills because he had had sexual contact with Bishop's mother.
Mitigating: Bishop's lawyers filed motions that cited evidence that indicated Braxley, who pleaded guilty and received a sentence of life without parole, was the primary perpetrator who struck the fatal blow. Bishop also suffered from a troubled childhood. He did not know his father's name. His mother, a prostitute and drug addict, has said she drank alcohol and ingested methamphetamine and cocaine when she was pregnant with her son. As a teenager, Bishop would join his mother, who was homeless, to smoke crack.
Kenneth Fults
Age: 47
Execution date: April 12, 2016
Crime committed: Jan. 30, 1996 in Spalding County
Aggravating: Fults was sentenced to die for killing his 19-year-old neighbor, Cathy Bounds, at the end of a weeklong crime spree. Fults pulled a handgun on Bounds who begged for her life and offered Fults the rings on her fingers. Fults instead forced Bounds into the bedroom, placed her face down on the bed and shot her five times in the back of the head.
Mitigating: Fults' lawyers argued that he was mildly intellectually disabled and cited testing that showed he had a fifth-grade reading level and a third-grade math level. They also asked courts to consider an affidavit of one of Fults' jurors, who used a racial slur when asked about his vote to sentence Fults to death. "Once he pled guilty, I knew I would vote for the death penalty because that's what that (slur) deserved," the juror said.
Daniel Anthony Lucas
Age: 37
Execution date: April 27, 2016
Crime committed: April 23, 1998 in Jones County
Aggravating: Lucas was sentenced to die for killing 37-year-old Steven Moss and Moss's two children - 11-year-old Bryan and 15-year-old Kristin - during a burglary Lucas committed with co-defendant Brandon Rhode. After Lucas and Rhode broke into the Moss home and were ransacking it, Bryan arrived home from school. They shot and wounded Bryan and then shot and killed him when they saw Kristin walking up the driveway. Then they killed Kristin and her father. Rhode was executed in 2010.
Mitigating: Lucas' clemency petition said he was raised by a father who physically abused Lucas's mother and whipped Lucas with a belt all over his body. After his father left, Lucas' mother had relationships with many abusive men and that Lucas would try but fail to protect her. By the time of the murders, Lucas was a lost, hopeless, drug-addicted 19-year-old, the petition said.
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