Ga. death row inmate asks high court for reprieve
By GREG BLUESTEIN - Associated Press Writer
http://www.macon.com/breaking/story/878721.htmlATLANTA -- A Georgia death row inmate scheduled to be put to death next week asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to grant him a reprieve until the justices resolve an Alabama death penalty case that his attorney said could affect his legal challenge.
Mark McClain asked the court to delay the execution until it decides another case that prompted the court last month to delay the execution of a Texas man. McClain's attorney, Brian Kammer, urged the court to delay the Georgia execution, too, saying the ruling could "alter the legal prism" through which his client's case is viewed.
Link:
http://www.supremecourtus.gov The Alabama case, set to be heard in November, centers on whether a new trial should be granted if a trial lawyer failed to raise certain objections during the penalty phase of a trial.
Kammer urged the court in legal briefings to wait until it rules on the Alabama case "rather than allow his execution to go forward with a question hanging over this case." He said "fundamental fairness and decency warrants a stay in this case."
Prosecutors urged the court against intervening. Beth Burton, a state attorney, said in a legal briefing that McClain's arguments rehash earlier appeals that have already been denied by state and federal courts. She contends that McClain "has failed to set forth any basis for granting a stay of execution."
McClain, 43, was convicted of the 1994 murder of Domino's Pizza manager Kevin Brown during a robbery in Augusta. McClain held Brown up at gunpoint, took $130 from the register and then shot and killed the 28-year-old manager as he turned to leave the store, according to prosecutors.
McClain's attorney argues that his client deserves a lesser punishment. Kammer said the shooting was the result of a "single, panicky .22 pistol shot from a considerable distance away" and argues that his client's case was the only robbery homicide case out of 55 across the state in 1995 to result in a death penalty.
McClain would be the third person executed in Georgia this year and the first in the state since a series of unprecedented capital punishment developments in Ohio led to a full review of lethal injection procedures there.
