The state Board of Pardons and Paroles has declined to grant clemency to a 42-year-old inmate scheduled to be executed tonight.
Marion Wilson was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Baldwin County — along with co-defendant Robert Butts — for the 1996 shooting death of an off-duty corrections officer. Donovan Parks, 24, wanted to become a counselor for inmates.
The board held a lengthy meeting Wednesday, hearing from members of Wilson and Parks’ family.
Clemency hearings in Georgia are closed to the media. The board’s deliberations are also private.
Also Wednesday, a Butts County Superior Court judge rejected Wilson’s latest petition.
In a recent court filing, Wilson’s lawyers contended the district attorney who prosecuted the case made misleading arguments to Wilson’s jury.
They also said Wilson was not eligible for the death penalty because he was not the person who shot and killed Parks.
But Judge Thomas Wilson dismissed the petition, saying one claim was raised too late and the other had already been decided in prior appeals.
Marion Wilson’s lawyer are now expected to appeal the judge’s ruling to the Georgia Supreme Court.
Wilson's execution is scheduled for 7 p.m., but typically the time doesn't hold as the legal grappling makes its way through various courts before the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether to intervene.
On March 28, 1996, Wilson and Butts, who was executed last year, spotted Parks at a Milledgeville Walmart and asked for a ride while he was buying cat food.
Source: ajc.com, Joshua Sharpe, June 20, 2019
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
