Another to be put to death
Set for May 22
By Shannon McCaffrey | Associated Press | Story updated at 9:17 PM on Thursday, May 8, 2008
ATLANTA - Two days after becoming the first state to break a seven-month pause in executions, Georgia is moving quickly to put another convicted killer to death later this month.

Samuel David Crowe was sentenced to die in 1989 after being convicted of killing a manager at the lumber company in Douglas County where he used to work. On Thursday, state Attorney General Thurbert Baker set his execution for May 22, a day after Mississippi is scheduled to execute Earl Wesley Berry.

Georgia executed William Earl Lynd on Tuesday, ushering in what is expected to be a wave of executions around the country following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that the three-drug lethal injection cocktail used by most states is constitutional.

Crowe, 48, pleaded guilty in 1989 to killing 39-year-old Joseph Pala as the manager closed up a Wickes Lumber store. Crowe was looking for money to feed a drug habit, according to prosecutors.

His case already has exhausted regular appeals with state and federal courts. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected his appeal on April 21. If executed, he would become the 19th inmate put to death in Georgia by lethal injection.

Crowe's lawyer, Ann Fort, said she would appeal for clemency to the state Board of Pardons and Paroles and might also seek a last-minute intervention from the courts.

Crowe was arrested a day after the gruesome crime in 1988. A salesman at the store told authorities that Pala's face had been beaten so violently it was left mutilated.

The medical examiner found that Pala was shot, beaten with a crowbar and hit with a can of paint that came open and spilled white paint on his face.

In the weeks before the slaying, Crowe asked workers at the store for a loan of $1,500, telling them he was behind in his bills. Store managers estimated Crowe made off with $1,160.30.

Fort said Thursday that Crowe's original lawyer had cautioned him against making a guilty plea. He fired the lawyer and pleaded guilty anyway "because he wanted to take responsibility for what he had done," Fort said.

Crowe thought he had a verbal agreement with the sheriff not to seek the death penalty, something the sheriff later denied, she said. A jury sentenced him to death.

"He had no prior record of any arrests, no violent history whatsoever," Fort said. "He regrets this with every fiber of his being."


Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on 050908


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