Marion Wilson was declared dead at 9:52 p.m. after being put to death tonight by lethal injection for a murder committed more than 2 decades ago.
The execution was carried out shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the 42-year-old's final appeals.
Wilson’s lawyers had asked the high court to halt the execution, and the court waited about 2 hours after the scheduled 7 p.m. execution to issue its decision.
The nation’s highest court often waits until well after that hour before deciding whether to intervene.
After hearing of the high court’s denial, Wilson’s 23-year-old daughter, Tykecia, screamed, “I want my daddy, I want my daddy back!” A man picked her up as she wailed, carried her to a car and drove away.
The Georgia Supreme Court refused to issue a stay of execution this afternoon, and the state Board of Pardons and Paroles declined to grant clemency to Wilson this morning.
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 parole 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.
Shortly after the parole board denied clemency, 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.
This afternoon, the Georgia Supreme Court, by a pair of 7-1 votes with Justice Robert Benham dissenting, also dismissed Wilson’s appeal as well as his request for new DNA testing and a new trial.
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.
Parks, who knew Butts from working with him at Burger King, had just come from Bible study.
Wilson and Butts were members of the Folk Nation street gang. Minutes after Parks agreed to give them a lift, he was pulled from his car, shot in the head with a sawed-off shotgun, and left for dead in the road.
Wilson’s attorneys have argued there is no evidence Wilson was the trigger man, or that he knew Butts was going to shoot Parks.
Wilson has said he thought Butts was likely going to rob Parks. The petition points out then-District Attorney Fred Bright had offered Wilson a sentence of life with the possibility of parole before his 1997 trial.
Wilson's attorneys have also said in filings that Bright, who died last year, took advantage of ambiguity in the evidence about which man pulled the trigger to accuse them both of it at their separate trials. Bright later said he believed Butts pulled the trigger.
The DA's office noted in filings this week that Georgia law doesn’t require a person to physically kill someone to be guilty of murder. Helping in a murder is enough.
Christopher Parks, who was 18 when his brother was murdered, wants Wilson to pay with his life as soon as possible.
“Donovan was someone who cared about people. He was someone who was trying to help someone who said they were stranded and needed a ride. Within 30 minutes, they took his life," Parks told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "Treated him like he was gum on the bottom of a shoe. Like he wasn’t worth anything.”
Outside the prison, a group a protesters gathered before 7 p.m. They’d driven from around the country to stand against the 1,500th American execution since 1976.
“That person has a family too,” SueZann Bosler said of Wilson.
Bosler was the rare protester who had a family member murdered. Her father, Rev. Billy Bosler, was stabbed repeatedly in front of her on Dec. 22, 1986, by James Bernard Campbell in South Florida. Campbell also seriously wounded the daughter, 24 at the time.
Campbell ended up on death row, but the daughter eventually joined the successful fight to get him resentenced to life.
“My father told me 8 years before this happened, If someone ever murdered me, I would not want that person to get the death penalty,’” she said. “My dad taught me about forgiveness.”
Christoper Parks, for his part, disagrees with death penalty abolitionists, because he believes the only punishment appropriate for taking his brother’s life is death itself.
Wilson becomes the 2nd condemned inmate executed in Georgia this year and the 74th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1983.
Wilson becomes the 10th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1,500th overall since the nation re-legalized the death penalty on July 2 1976; executions in the country began on January 17th, 1977.
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution & Rick Halperin, June 20, 2019
GEORGIA CLEARS WAY FOR THE U.S.’S 1,500TH EXECUTION
ATLANTA -- With the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denial of clemency for death row prisoner Marion Wilson, Jr., the State of Georgia has cleared the way for his June 20th execution.
Barring any unforeseen delays, his execution will become the United States’ 1500th execution since resumption began in 1977.
“This is a horrific milestone in our country’s barbaric practice of killing prisoners. Even with the death penalty in steady decline throughout the country, it is still troubling each time a state decides to take a life,” said Scott Langley, co-director of Death Penalty Action, a national organization which has been providing resources and leadership to highlight pervasive issues of concern as the count reaches 1500. (See:
www.DeathPenaltyAction.org/1500th).
Petition signatures from around the country and the world are being delivered today to the office of Georgia Governor Brian Kemp.
The pace of executions is only one indicator of the steady decline of capital punishment. It took 7 years between the 500th and 1,000th executions. Then it took almost 14 years to get to the 1,500th.
While 29 states still have the death penalty on the books, Georgia is on a small list of only a handful of states that are still actively executing prisoners.
It has carried out 73 of the 1,499 executions to-date making it the sixth-most executing state in modern history. Georgia has also figured prominently in some of the most significant rulings and executions this country has seen in the last 50 years.
1972’s Furman v. Georgia decision ruled that all death penalty laws in the United States were “arbitrary and capricious” and therefore unconstitutional.
The 1976 Gregg v. Georgia decision upheld the new laws and allowed the resumption of executions.
The death penalty is no less arbitrary today. Georgia is also the state that carried out the controversial 2011 execution of Troy Davis, a man largely believed to have been innocent.
A searchable database covering the 1,499 executions to-date was made available last week by the Death Penalty Information Center at
www.DeathPenaltyInfo.org (not affiliated with Death Penalty Action).
Since the 1000th execution, which took place in 2005, nine states have ended the death penalty by legislation or court order, including New Hampshire just last month, while another four have put a moratorium in place.
Protestors are planning to vigil around the State of Georgia Thursday night in protest of the execution. Other solidarity vigils will be taking place around the world, including in Washington, DC, Dallas, Paris and the UK.
At the prison in Jackson where the execution is to be carried out, Death Penalty Action Advisory Board Members Randy Gardner of Utah and SueZann Bosler of Florida will be there to add their voices to the protest against the execution of Mr. Wilson.
Randy's brother was executed by firing squad in Utah, and SueZann witnessed her father’s murder and she herself was stabbed and left for dead.
Source: Scott Langley, Abolitionist Action Committee, 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
