Georgia Man First to Be Executed Following Baze v. Rees
In its decision in Baze v. Rees, 553 U.S. ___ (2008) last month, the United States Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the Kentucky Supreme Court that Kentucky’s lethal injection protocol, which involved the administration of four drugs: Valium, which relaxes the person; sodium thiopental, which renders the person unconscious; Pavulon, which stops the person’s breathing; and potassium chloride, which puts the person into cardiac arrest and ultimately causes his or her death, does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. The primary opinion, authored by Chief Justice Roberts, noted that the petitioners had conceded that Kentucky’s procedure was humane if properly performed, and held that the petitioners failed to show that there was a risk that the procedure would not be properly followed—namely in the misadministration of the sodium thiopental—sufficient to present a “substantial risk of serious harm,” an “objectively intolerable risk of harm” in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The Court further rejected the petitioners’ showing of arguably safer alternatives which had not been tried or tested as a justification that Kentucky’s current method was “cruel and unusual.”
Georgia will be the first state to execute a convict by lethal injection following Baze. William Earl Lynd was convicted of murder for shooting his girlfriend Ginger Moore in the head three times in 1988 and then burying her body near his Berrien County farm. After the shooting, Lynd fled to Ohio, where he shot another woman, Leslie Joan Sharkey, who had pulled over to help Lynd with car trouble. Sharkey gave a full account of the shooting to police before dying in a hospital three days later. Lynd then went from Ohio to Florida, where he eventually surrendered to authorities. He is scheduled to be executed tomorrow at 7 p.m. Lynd’s attorneys are making a last ditch appeal to the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles to save Lynd’s life, arguing that the crime was not premeditated, since Lynd and Moore had consumed marijuana, Valium and alcohol on the day of the shooting.
Mississippi is vying with Georgia to be the first state to execute by lethal injection following Baze, attempting to execute Earl Wesley Berry for a 1987 murder today, however the Attorney General has not received permission from the courts. There are currently 109 men and one woman on death row in Georgia, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.
