Willie James Pye, a 59-year-old Georgia inmate is scheduled for execution by lethal injection tonight, Wednesday, March 20 at the state prison in Jackson, Georgia. Pye’s execution would be the first to be carried out in the state since 2020.
In 1996 Pye was convicted of brutally murdering his girlfriend Alicia Lynn Yarbrough three years earlier.
His lawyers have appealed to the governor for clemency but were denied although they claim that Pye had inadequate counsel and that he is mentally challenged with an IG of 68. In Georgia mentally disabled convicts cannot be sentenced to death.
His attorneys argued that although experts agree Pye meets the criteria for being mentally disabled, Georgia’s threshold for the classification is too high and other mitigating factors in the case have been ignored. “They also would have learned the challenges he faced from birth — profound poverty, neglect, constant violence and chaos in his family home — foreclosed the possibility of healthy development,” they wrote. “This is precisely the kind of evidence that supports a life sentence verdict.”
But the Georgia Parole Board rejected those arguments after a closed-door meeting on Tuesday and denied Pye’s bid for clemency.
Pye’s co-defendant Chester Adams, now 55, pleaded guilty in April 1997 to charges of malice murder, kidnapping with bodily injury, armed robbery, rape and aggravated sodomy. He got five consecutive life prison sentences and remains behind bars.
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