As his scheduled execution nears, lawyers for a Georgia man are asking the state parole board to spare his life and challenging the constitutionality of his sentence in court.
Scotty Garnell Morrow, 52, is set to be put to death Thursday at the state prison in Jackson. He was convicted of murder in the shooting deaths of his ex-girlfriend Barbara Ann Young and her friend Tonya Woods at Young’s Gainesville home in December 1994. A third woman was also shot but survived.
In a petition filed Tuesday in Butts County Superior Court, his lawyers argued his death sentence is unconstitutional because it was improperly imposed.
If jurors want to recommend a death sentence for a murder conviction, they must find that at least one aggravating factor specified in the law applies. A death sentence must also be unanimous.
In Morrow’s case, jurors indicated on the verdict form that the state had proved six aggravating factors for Woods’ murder and four in Young’s. Those included findings that both murders were “outrageously and wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman.”
The verdict form also clearly indicates a death sentence recommendation but doesn’t specify which murder conviction jurors believed merited the death sentence.
A couple of weeks after the sentencing, in July 1999, the judge held a hearing and said he recognized the judgment “was not fully compliant with the statute.” He entered a new order imposing a death sentence specifically for the first count of the indictment, Young’s murder.
Morrow’s attorneys argue that’s unconstitutional because the court, rather than the jury, determined the death penalty was merited for a specific murder.
The verdict form was flawed, intermingling potential aggravating factors for the two murders and providing a single line to indicate the sentence but failing to indicate a specific sentence for each of two murder counts, Morrow’s lawyers wrote.
There’s no indication of a unanimous jury decision that death was the right sentence for either of the murders, they argue. It’s possible that some jurors may have thought death was appropriate for Young’s murder but not for the murder of Woods and vice versa.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution requires a jury, not a judge, to make a unanimous decision to sentence someone to death, meaning Morrow’s sentence is unconstitutional, his lawyers argue.
Morrow’s lawyers are asking a judge to delay his execution to give the court an opportunity to consider these arguments.
Lawyers for the state argue that these claims have already been raised and rejected by courts and, therefore, are procedurally barred because Morrow’s lawyers haven’t shown new facts or law that would overcome that barrier. But even if the arguments weren’t procedurally barred, state lawyers argue, Morrow’s death sentence isn’t unconstitutional.
“The record clearly establishes that the jury recommended at least one death sentence for Morrow’s murders,” they wrote.
Having found both murders “wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman,” there’s no reasonable probability jurors “would have rescinded their death sentence and given (Morrow) life if asked to clarify their death sentence,” state lawyers argue.
Morrow killed Woods and Young on Dec. 29, 1994, when he went to Young’s home to try to win her back. Woods told him to leave, saying Young had just been using him for money and companionship while her “real man” was in prison. An inability to properly process and express emotions resulting from a violent childhood caused him to snap, his lawyers wrote in a clemency petition.
In the petition, Morrow’s lawyers ask the State Board of Pardons and Paroles to consider beatings and rape that Morrow suffered as a child, evidence the trial jury never heard, and to spare his life. They also said Morrow feels deep remorse for the pain and loss he caused the Woods and Young families and is particularly devastated at having deprived Young’s children of their mother.
They also argued that emotionally fueled, spontaneous killings are rarely punished by the death penalty, and commuting his sentence to life in prison, with or without possibility of parole, would bring his sentence more in line with those of other people convicted of murder under similar circumstances.
The parole board, the only authority in Georgia that can commute a death sentence, was holding a closed-door hearing Wednesday to consider his case for clemency.
Morrow would be the first prisoner executed by Georgia this year.
