A lawyer for a Georgia death-row inmate said a Dougherty County judge is expected to stay Wednesday's scheduled execution of Marcus Ray Johnson.
Superior Court Judge Willie Lockette was expected to sign the stay of execution on Tuesday, attorney Brian Kammer said.
Johnson had been scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection for a 1994 murder. He recently filed a motion for a new trial and is asking that DNA testing be performed on some of the evidence collected in the investigation of the rape and stabbing death of Angela Sizemore.
On Monday, Johnson's lawyers had asked the state Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant clemency. After hearing arguments from defense lawyers and prosecutors, the parole board said late Monday it was not making an immediate decision. On Tuesday, Johnson's lawyers appeared before Lockett.
Kammer has said that DNA testing was not conducted on several samples because the technology at the time was not as advanced as it is now. But, he said, "there is plenty of evidence that could be tested."
He thinks tests could show Sizemore was attacked by others and not just by Johnson.
"Knowing him for 12 years now, I have felt he could never have done this, " Kammer said. "He's always been bitter and angry that he's in prison for something he didn't do."
According to testimony at the trial in 1998, Johnson and Sizemore met at an Albany bar called Fundamentals shortly after midnight the morning of March 24, 1994. She had been to a memorial service several hours earlier and was drinking so heavily that the bartenders stopped serving her. Johnson, angry because another woman had rejected him, was shooting pool when he first saw Sizemore.
Witnesses said Sizemore and Johnson danced, and they were seen in a booth kissing and leaving together.
Johnson said they had sex in a nearby parking lot. He told investigators he and Sizemore got into an argument because she wanted to "snuggle" after the sex and he didn't. He admitted he punched her in the nose, but Johnson said he didn't kill Sizemore.
Sizemore was found later that morning in her white Suburban, parked behind an east Albany apartment complex. She had been sodomized, raped and stabbed 41 times.
Investigators found a drop of blood on the leather jacket Johnson was wearing that morning. Kammer said there should have been more blood given the number of times Sizemore was stabbed.
Investigators also said Johnson's pocket knife was consistent with the weapon that was used to stab Sizemore, but they did not find any blood on it.
Kammer said most of the evidence against Johnson was eyewitness testimony, which can be unreliable.
"There are lots of problems with the eyewitness testimony in this case, " Kammer said.
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