A June 17 execution date has been set for Marcus Wellons, who sits on death row for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old Cobb County girl.
The execution was scheduled just days after the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the state’s lethal-injection secrecy law. State attorneys argued the law is needed for Georgia to be able to obtain drugs to carry out executions.
The Department of Corrections does not have lethal injection drugs in supply, spokeswoman Gwendolyn Hogan said Wednesday. “However, we are confident that we will be able to obtain the drug in advance of the scheduled execution.”
Wellons was sentenced to death in 1993 for sexually assaulting and strangling India Roberts, who lived in a neighboring townhouse in an upscale Vinings apartment complex.
He abducted the teenager shortly after she said goodbye to her mother on the morning of Aug. 31, 1989, and walked toward her school bus stop. An autopsy showed the Campbell High School sophomore was possibly strangled with a telephone cord.
Wellons’ case received national attention when it was disclosed after the trial that his jurors gave erotic chocolate gifts to the judge and bailiff.
In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court said the gifts raised questions that required further examination. A death-penalty case, the high court said, “must be conducted with dignity and respect.”
The justices found disturbing a penis-shaped chocolate that was given to Cobb Superior Court Judge Mary Staley and chocolate breasts sent to the court bailiff.
After a review, the federal appeals court in Atlanta said it found the gifts “tasteless and inappropriate.” But the court determined Wellons did not deserve a new trial because the gifts played no part in the judge’s or jury’s considerations.
In 2010, juror Mary Jo Hooper told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that during the trial she ordered a box of chocolate-shaped turtles from a friend who ran a candy shop to give to fellow jurors and court personnel. The friend included a penis-shaped chocolate as a joke and, after a bailiff said the judge wanted to see it, Hooper said she discreetly gave it to Staley after the trial ended. An unidentified juror sent the breast-shaped chocolates to the bailiff after the trial.
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