Georgia death row inmate says prosecutor hid plea deal wit key witness, tainting trial

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Attorneys for a Georgia inmate sent to death row 25 years ago are accusing a prosecutor of hiding a deal that they contend casts doubt on the credibility of a crucial trial witness.

Warren King was sentenced to death in September 1998 after an Appling County jury convicted him of murdering Karen Crosby, a convenience store clerk who was fatally shot during an armed robbery in southeast Georgia.

Now, King's lawyers say they have evidence that the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case, John B. Johnson, made a previously undisclosed deal with the only eyewitness to the crime. They're asking a Superior Court judge in Butts County, home of Georgia's death row, for a hearing in hopes of King getting a new trial.

Evidence at King's murder trial showed that he and Walter Smith went together to rob the rural convenience store in September 1994, and that Smith brought his uncle's gun and a mask. Both men were charged with Crosby's murder, with King standing trial first.

Prosecutors granted Smith immunity to take the witness stand at King's trial, and Smith told the jury it was King who shot the woman. King's lawyers say no other witnesses or physical evidence pointed to King as the shooter.

What prosecutors didn't disclose to defense attorneys or the trial jury is that Johnson had promised to spare Smith from a possible death sentence in exchange for his testimony, King’s lawyers said in a July 8 legal filing.

Prosecutors would have been required to disclose to defense lawyers any favorable treatment Smith received in exchange for testifying, King's appellate lawyers said. Had King's trial attorneys known about the deal, they could have used it to attack Smith's credibility as a witness.

“Had this suppressed evidence been disclosed, there is a reasonable probability that the outcome of the trial would have been different,” attorney Anna Arceneaux wrote in King's legal filing.

Arceneaux wrote that not only did prosecutors withhold knowledge of the deal from defense attorneys before the 1998 trial, but Johnson and Smith both denied its existence in remarks to the jury.

The Associated Press left a telephone message seeking comment with Johnson on Wednesday. The veteran prosecutor retired from the district attorney’s office for the Brunswick Judicial Circuit in 2021. He unsuccessfully challenged District Attorney Keith Higgins in a Republican primary election in May.

The new legal documents include an affidavit from one of Smith's attorneys, John B. Brewer III, saying that Johnson and Smith reached a plea agreement before the trial. The terms were that Smith would receive a life sentence with a chance for parole in exchange for him testifying against King. Smith received that punishment in 2001 when he pleaded guilty to a charge of murder in Crosby's death.

“These terms were not reduced to writing, but there was a verbal agreement,” Brewer's affidavit said. He added: "I would never have recommended that Mr. Smith testify against Mr. King unless I knew for certain that he had a deal and would avoid the death penalty.”

According to a transcript of his closing arguments during the 1998 trial, Johnson told the jury that he would have been required to disclose any deals with Smith "because it tests his credibility.”

“There are no deals or he would have told you that," Johnson told the trial jury. "And defense counsel would have made sure you heard that if there was one.”

King's latest attempt to overturn his death sentence comes after the U.S. Supreme Court on July 2 declined to consider his claims that Johnson improperly excluded Black jurors during the trial. King is Black; his trial was heard by 10 white and two Black jurors.

Lower courts upheld King's conviction and sentence after his lawyers presented evidence that Johnson used strikes to eliminate 87.5% of the eligible Black jurors for the trial and only 8.8% of the eligible white jurors, all women.

A 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision prohibits attorneys from excluding prospective jurors based on their race. At the trial, Johnson gave other, nonracial reasons for keeping Black panelists off the jury.

In their July 8 legal filing, King's attorneys repeat their assertion that potential Black jurors were struck because of their race. They cite new evidence: Johnson's own handwritten notes, which they obtained last fall. The lawyers say the notes show Johnson carefully tracked which prospective jurors were Black and which were women.

King's attorneys said Johnson took notes on how potential Black jurors answered questions about the death penalty and whether they had criminal histories. They say he didn't make similar notes for white panelists, but rather tracked which potential white jurors had family members who were crime victims.

King's lawyers said the prosecutor's notes provide “concrete proof that Johnson was indeed considering race and gender” of prospective jurors.

Source: The Associated Press, Russ Bynum, July 17, 2024

_____________________________________________________________________

Twitter/X | Facebook | Telegram | Contact Us

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

USA | What happens in the final weeks before an execution? These reporters were inside the room.

The journalists behind ‘The Last 12 Weeks’ earned extraordinary access to a death penalty defense team—and faced difficult ethical choices Many defense lawyers are naturally cagey. They work in a pressure cooker, protecting their clients’ rights while fighting for the best possible outcome. And arguably, the stakes can’t get any higher than trying to save a client’s life. So no, defense lawyers don’t usually invite journalists into strategy meetings. But that’s what happened when Marshall Project reporter Maurice Chammah and Serial Productions senior producer Alvin Melathe spent the final few months before a Texas execution embedded with a capital defense team.

North Korea | 'I was only 9': North Korean defector recalls childhood memory of public execution

Kim Eun-joo was 9 years old when her teacher stopped their lesson and told the class to follow her outside. The children were marched to a public execution ground in North Korea. “I would cry even when our family dog died,” Kim said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. “But the first time I watched humans killing a human, I had no words for what I was feeling. It was the most brutal scene I have ever seen, in any movie or in real life.” The memory has stayed with her ever since. Now a human rights advocate after defecting from North Korea, Kim recently brought that childhood scene to the 9th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris, where North Korea’s use of public executions and capital punishment was officially placed on the agenda for the first time.

19 July 1943 | Auschwitz's Largest Public Hanging: 12 Polish Prisoners Executed in Escape Reprisal

OSWIECIM, Poland — The SS carried out the largest public hanging in Auschwitz history on July 19, 1943, executing 12 Polish prisoners before other inmates as collective punishment for escapes and civilian contacts. The victims, all from the camp’s surveyors’ labor unit, were hanged on gallows built in front of the camp kitchen during an Auschwitz I roll call. The SS orchestrated this reprisal following prisoner escapes from the surveyors’ detail and unauthorized communication between inmates and civilians. Camp authorities used the recent escapes as a pretext to impose collective punishment.

Former Florida cop to be executed on same day as 80-year-old Pasco man

In an unprecedented move in the modern history of capital punishment, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday cleared the way for 2 executions to occur on the same day. DeSantis reset the execution of James Duckett, whose execution earlier this year was stayed amid efforts to secure DNA testing and analysis of evidence in his case. Duckett’s execution was reset for July 28. That is the same day previously set for the execution of Dominick Occhicone. Court records indicate that Duckett’s execution is scheduled for noon. Occhicone’s is set to follow at 6 p.m.

Texas: The inmates who refused to die quietly and had to be gassed out of their cells before execution

Former crime reporter Michelle Lyons, who witnessed nearly 300 executions in Texas, US, reveals the desperate acts of death row prisoners who refused to accept their fate After spending years or often decades locked up in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day, most Death Row inmates go willingly to their executions. However, some refuse to die quietly - with officers forced to gas them out of cells, strap up their heads and even give chase across prison grounds. Michelle Lyons, who has witnessed nearly 300 executions in Texas, US, exclusively tells Sun Online how certain inmates "fight like hell" in their last moments. On most occasions, Michelle watched from the witness area, with the killers already on the gurney - the stretcher where they'd be given a lethal injection. Seven prisoners once tried to escape from the Row in Huntsville - with one shoving magazines and newspapers under his clothes to help him roll over razor-wire fences. Others have had to b...

Japan: Capital punishment for a minor

Death chamber at Tokyo Detention Center The Supreme Court's recent decision to uphold the death sentence given in a lay judge trial to a 24-year-old man for murders he committed when he was a minor raises questions about the lay judge trial system and capital punishment. These include whether the lay judges correctly understood the spirit of the Juvenile Law in sentencing the defendant to death. It was the 1st death sentence handed down on a minor in a lay judge trial. The murders took place in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, in 2010 when Yutaro Chiba was 18 - meaning he fell under the purview of the Juvenile Law. Chiba was convicted of entering his ex-girlfriend's house and stabbing to death the girl's sister and a female friend of the girl with a butcher knife, seriously injuring a male friend of the sister and abducting the girl. Prosecutors said Chiba killed the victims because they were trying to separate him and his former girlfriend. Since Chiba pleaded n...

Florida to execute William Silvia for 2006 shooting murder of wife

William Silvia, convicted of the 2006 shooting murder of his wife, Patricia, is scheduled to die by lethal injection in August, according to a death warrant filed by Gov. Ron DeSantis on July 17. If all previously scheduled executions go as planned, Silvia will be the 13th person put to death in Florida this year, following a record-breaking 19 executions in 2025. Silvia, now 61, went to his estranged wife's mother's house in Seminole County to attempt to reconcile with her, but first he calmly bought a 12-gauge shotgun and ammunition, prosecutors said. After talking to Patricia Silvia, Silvia got the shotgun from his truck, shot her mother, Betty Woodard, in the face, and fatally shot Patricia in the head, court records show. Woodard, who was standing in front of her daughter, lost her left eye and the top portion of her nose.

Idaho | Death row prisoners sue over state's new firing squad

BOISE (Idaho Statesman) – Days after Idaho made the switch to a firing squad for executions, two Idaho death row prisoners next in line to be put to death sued the state prison system, saying its director withheld information about how she settled on the specifics for carrying out the method. Attorneys for prisoners Thomas Creech and Gerald Pizzuto filed suit this week in state district court against Idaho Department of Correction Director Bree Derrick. In the filing, they called her approval of an updated standard operating procedure for the firing squad and lethal injection as a backup method “arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion and in excess of the statutory authority of the agency.”

Florida executes Dennis Sochor

Man, 74, becomes oldest inmate executed in Florida in state’s 10th lethal injection this year Florida put to death one of its oldest prisoners in its history on Tuesday, a 74-year-old convicted murderer who was 1 of 3 older inmates scheduled for execution within the span of a month in the nation’s busiest death penalty state. Dennis Sochor was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. following a 3-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, the office of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said. He was convicted of killing a woman on Jan. 1, 1982, just hours after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party.

Oldest inmate set to be executed in Florida will face strict spending limit for final meal

An entire category of food is also off-limits for final meal requests in Florida Florida is currently preparing to execute its oldest inmate later today (July 14), a 74-year-old convicted murderer who has been on death row since the 1980s—but his final meal will be limited by a strict budget. Dennis Sochor is scheduled to be put to death later today, making history as the oldest inmate to ever be executed in the state. The criminal, who has been on death row for nearly 40 years, will be administered the lethal three-drug injection, with the process due to begin at around 6pm.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog