Thats is.. I'm moving to Texas!
All I'm gonna say on this is.. I wonder if little Ms. Aleta thought it was cruel and unusual punishment to be raped and killed? Answer that question damnit!!
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
Supreme Court delays Williams' execution
By Jack Warner
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer
Williams and victim Aleta Bunch
YOUR TURN
Should Alex Williams be executed, even though he was only 17 when he raped and murdered Aleta Bunch?
Yes 70% 1239
No 30% 531
Total Votes 1770
Email your thoughts on this issue
The Georgia Supreme Court granted Alexander Williams a stay of execution Tuesday, apparently on the issue of whether the electric chair is cruel and unusual punishment and not for the major reasons put forth in the international outcry over his case.
The vote was 6-1, with Justice George Carley dissenting, in an unusually swift response to an appeal filed only a couple of hours earlier. Four of the justices gave no reason for the indefinite stay, but Justices Carol Hunstein and Harris Hines said they voted for it because the court is already considering the appeal of another condemned inmate on the grounds the electric chair is unconstitutional.
"I'm disappointed," said Carol Bunch, mother of the teenage model Williams raped and killed nearly 15 years ago. "Now I'm going to have to suffer through more nightmares for the next 90 days until they decide they're going to do it."
The question of cruel and unusual punishment was part of the appeal filed by attorneys from the Federal Defense Program. But its chief points were that Williams was three weeks short of adulthood when he killed Aleta Bunch, 16, in Augusta. His attorney gave the jury no mitigating evidence, such as mental illness and abuse at home; and allegations that he is now "flagrantly psychotic."
Williams was to have been executed 7 p.m. Thursday.
Earlier Tuesday, Williams' lawyers appeared before the Board of Pardons and Paroles to beg for clemency and commutation of sentence to life in prison. Their presentation apparently moved the five-member board. A few hours later the board called another hearing today to hear Richmond County District Attorney Daniel Craig and the victim's family.
A half-hour after that, the Supreme Court order was announced and the parole board called off the meeting. Spokeswoman Kathy Browning said the board would bow out of the case until the high court rules. Should it lift the stay, she said, the board will again take it up.
The stay will remain in effect at least until the court issues its ruling in the Troy Anthony Davis case, which was argued July 17. That decision must come by the end of its fall term in late November.
If the stay in Williams' case depends entirely on the question of whether the electric chair is unconstitutional, then even a favorable ruling in the Davis case would apparently leave Williams facing death -- this time by lethal injection.
Attorney Harold Daniel, who made the presentation to the parole board, said "I'm very pleased" by the Supreme Court decision, regardless of its reasoning. Ellyn Jaeger, director of public policy for the National Mental Health Association of Georgia, had a more mixed reaction.
"I guess it's good news, bad news," said Jaeger, whose organization has been in the forefront of the movement to save Williams. "It gives us more time, and that's a good thing."
But she said she would have preferred a ruling based on Williams' mental state and the failure to provide treatment for him before he committed murder. "I don't understand how the state would execute anybody with a profound mental illness."
Amnesty International, leader of the international protests, "cautiously welcomed" the stay.
"We obviously welcome any measure that spares the life of Alexander Williams and do not want to diminish the importance of the constitutional issues at stake here," Amnesty's U.S. Senior Deputy Executive Director Curt Goering said in New York. "However, the most significant issues -- Williams' mental illness, childhood abuse and lack of competent counsel -- seem to have been ignored in a technical discussion concerning the method of death."
Among the papers presented to the parole board Tuesday were affidavits and statements from five of the jurors who sentenced him to die.
All five said that if Williams' lawyer had brought out evidence of his mental problems and abuse by his mother, they would not have voted for the death penalty.
One of those jurors, Stephen Dickson, accompanied the lawyers into the hearing room Tuesday.
It was not known if he spoke during the meeting, but in the file left with the board was his affidavit urging "those deciding clemency to rectify my error and commute Alex's sentence to life in prison without parole."
According to affidavits from other members of Williams' family, his mother beat him regularly and fiercely, often for no discernable reason.
She also subjected him to bizarre punishments such as locking him out of their house naked in broad daylight.
[/quote]
The story can be found HERE.
------------------
God, Guns and Guts made this country a great country!
[This message has been edited by KaMaKaZe (edited August 23, 2000).]
All I'm gonna say on this is.. I wonder if little Ms. Aleta thought it was cruel and unusual punishment to be raped and killed? Answer that question damnit!!
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
Supreme Court delays Williams' execution
By Jack Warner
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer
Williams and victim Aleta Bunch
YOUR TURN
Should Alex Williams be executed, even though he was only 17 when he raped and murdered Aleta Bunch?
Yes 70% 1239
No 30% 531
Total Votes 1770
Email your thoughts on this issue
The Georgia Supreme Court granted Alexander Williams a stay of execution Tuesday, apparently on the issue of whether the electric chair is cruel and unusual punishment and not for the major reasons put forth in the international outcry over his case.
The vote was 6-1, with Justice George Carley dissenting, in an unusually swift response to an appeal filed only a couple of hours earlier. Four of the justices gave no reason for the indefinite stay, but Justices Carol Hunstein and Harris Hines said they voted for it because the court is already considering the appeal of another condemned inmate on the grounds the electric chair is unconstitutional.
"I'm disappointed," said Carol Bunch, mother of the teenage model Williams raped and killed nearly 15 years ago. "Now I'm going to have to suffer through more nightmares for the next 90 days until they decide they're going to do it."
The question of cruel and unusual punishment was part of the appeal filed by attorneys from the Federal Defense Program. But its chief points were that Williams was three weeks short of adulthood when he killed Aleta Bunch, 16, in Augusta. His attorney gave the jury no mitigating evidence, such as mental illness and abuse at home; and allegations that he is now "flagrantly psychotic."
Williams was to have been executed 7 p.m. Thursday.
Earlier Tuesday, Williams' lawyers appeared before the Board of Pardons and Paroles to beg for clemency and commutation of sentence to life in prison. Their presentation apparently moved the five-member board. A few hours later the board called another hearing today to hear Richmond County District Attorney Daniel Craig and the victim's family.
A half-hour after that, the Supreme Court order was announced and the parole board called off the meeting. Spokeswoman Kathy Browning said the board would bow out of the case until the high court rules. Should it lift the stay, she said, the board will again take it up.
The stay will remain in effect at least until the court issues its ruling in the Troy Anthony Davis case, which was argued July 17. That decision must come by the end of its fall term in late November.
If the stay in Williams' case depends entirely on the question of whether the electric chair is unconstitutional, then even a favorable ruling in the Davis case would apparently leave Williams facing death -- this time by lethal injection.
Attorney Harold Daniel, who made the presentation to the parole board, said "I'm very pleased" by the Supreme Court decision, regardless of its reasoning. Ellyn Jaeger, director of public policy for the National Mental Health Association of Georgia, had a more mixed reaction.
"I guess it's good news, bad news," said Jaeger, whose organization has been in the forefront of the movement to save Williams. "It gives us more time, and that's a good thing."
But she said she would have preferred a ruling based on Williams' mental state and the failure to provide treatment for him before he committed murder. "I don't understand how the state would execute anybody with a profound mental illness."
Amnesty International, leader of the international protests, "cautiously welcomed" the stay.
"We obviously welcome any measure that spares the life of Alexander Williams and do not want to diminish the importance of the constitutional issues at stake here," Amnesty's U.S. Senior Deputy Executive Director Curt Goering said in New York. "However, the most significant issues -- Williams' mental illness, childhood abuse and lack of competent counsel -- seem to have been ignored in a technical discussion concerning the method of death."
Among the papers presented to the parole board Tuesday were affidavits and statements from five of the jurors who sentenced him to die.
All five said that if Williams' lawyer had brought out evidence of his mental problems and abuse by his mother, they would not have voted for the death penalty.
One of those jurors, Stephen Dickson, accompanied the lawyers into the hearing room Tuesday.
It was not known if he spoke during the meeting, but in the file left with the board was his affidavit urging "those deciding clemency to rectify my error and commute Alex's sentence to life in prison without parole."
According to affidavits from other members of Williams' family, his mother beat him regularly and fiercely, often for no discernable reason.
She also subjected him to bizarre punishments such as locking him out of their house naked in broad daylight.
[/quote]
The story can be found HERE.
------------------
God, Guns and Guts made this country a great country!
[This message has been edited by KaMaKaZe (edited August 23, 2000).]