Georgia: Death row inmate Melbert Ray Ford Jr. granted 90-day stay

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles on Thursday granted condemned killer Melbert Ray Ford Jr. a 90-day stay of execution because the 5-member board has only 4 members.

Ford sits on death row for the 1986 killings of his former girlfriend, Martha Matich, and her 11-year-old niece, Lisa Chapman, during a grocery store robbery in Newton County. He was scheduled to die by lethal injection at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Gov. Sonny Perdue has yet to replace former parole board member Milton E. "Buddy" Nix, who served until the end of last year.

The board was scheduled to consider Ford's clemency petition early Tuesday. In a statement, the board said that the last time it heard a clemency petition without its entire five-member board, a court found the action unconstitutional.

This occurred in 2002 after an ethics scandal led to the resignations of 2 board members and only 1 of those vacancies was filled when the board considered and denied the clemency petition of death-row inmate Wallace Fugate. A Fulton County judge granted a stay, saying the board needed all its members, and the Georgia Supreme Court agreed.

After a 5th member was named, the board once again considered Fugate's petition for clemency and denied it. He was executed in August 2002.

Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Feb. 18, 2010

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