Williams granted reprieve

Web posted August 23, 2000

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By Sandy Hodson
Staff Writer

Alexander Williams already had set the menu for his last meal - three fried-egg sandwiches with a cola and a candy bar - when the Georgia Supreme Court voted 5-2 Tuesday to grant a stay of his execution.

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Mr. Williams, 32, came within two days of execution when his attorneys petitioned the Supreme Court to hear another appeal and issue a stay. Within a few hours Tuesday afternoon, the court issued an order to stay the execution.

Mr. Williams was convicted of the March 4, 1986, kidnapping, armed robbery, rape and murder of 16-year-old Aleta Bunch. At the conclusion of his four-day trial in Richmond County Superior Court five months later, the jury sentenced Mr. Williams, then 18, to death.

The Supreme Court's two-paragraph order does not specify a reason for granting the stay or indicate how long it might remain in effect. Nor did the court say if the justices would accept Mr. Williams' appeal.

Two justices did write separately, however, that they voted to stay Mr. Williams' execution because they are considering a ruling on whether death in the electric chair is cruel and inhuman punishment.

In the petition filed Tuesday on Mr. Williams' behalf, his attorneys argued death by electrocution is unconstitutional. Because the court is considering that claim in the case of death row inmate Troy Davis - condemned for the September 1991 murder of an off-duty police officer in Savannah - ``It would be incongruous to allow an electrocution to occur when its constitutionality has not been ruled upon by this court,'' Mr. Williams' attorney wrote in the request for a stay.

Although the Supreme Court has ruled many times that death by electrocution is constitutional, the rulings came before the state changed the method of execution to lethal injection this year. The new law changes the method only for those sentenced to death after May, unless the Supreme Court finds that electrocution is unconstitutional.

Two basic arguments specific to Mr. Williams' case also should be considered by the Supreme Court, his attorneys wrote: Mr. Williams was 17 years old, a juvenile, when he committed capital murder; and Mr. Williams is mentally ill and rendered sane only through forced medication.

All but a handful of countries have banned the execution of juveniles, and Western countries have signed a treaty prohibits the practice, Mr. Williams' attorneys argue.

The United States signed that treaty four years after Mr. Williams was condemned. The United States, however, noted an exception in the treaty. Mr. Williams' attorneys ask the Supreme Court to consider the provision enforceable in all U.S. courts.

In a companion brief filed by 14 organizations that work on behalf of children, John R. Martin of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers also asks the Supreme Court to prohibit Mr. Williams' execution.

Mr. Williams' attorneys allege it is unconstitutional to execute him when he is rendered mentally competent only by forced medication to treat chronic paranoid schizophrenia - a diagnosis reached by the prison medical staff.

``The prison actually sends people into this person's cell to hold him down while other personnel shoot him up with drugs so that he will stop being psychotic,'' according to the petition.

The arguments Mr. Williams' attorneys made in Tuesday's petition are based on similar arguments made last month in a petition filed in Butts County Superior Court. Georgia's death row is located in Jackson in Butts County.

The Butts County judge denied Mr. Williams' petition, agreeing with the state's attorney general that each issue already had been argued and rejected in prior appeals and could not be argued again. The only new issue - violation of a treaty - cannot be exerted as a private right, the judge wrote, although he included a copy of the treaty with his decision ``because of the novelty of this issue.''

The Georgia Supreme Court rejected Mr. Williams' initial, direct appeal in 1988; a state appeal also was denied, and the Supreme Court declined to hear arguments on the decision. Mr. Williams' case went into a federal appeal in 1992. It wasn't until June that the appeal ended when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Mr. Williams' request to appeal further.

Staff Writer Walter C. Jones contributed to this article.

Reach Sandy Hodson at (706) 823-3226.