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On the same<\/span> day the state of Georgia issued a death warrant for Stacey Ian Humphreys, setting his execution for December 17, Gov. Brian Kemp announced<\/a> his latest appointment to the Board of Pardons and Parole, the five-member body that would ultimately decide whether Humphreys would live or die.<\/p>\n The new member was Kim McCoy, previously a victims\u2019 advocate at the Cobb County District Attorney\u2019s Office. As the head of the Victim Witness Unit for 25 years, she offered dedicated support to victims\u2019 family members \u201cin capital cases and select high-profile cases,\u201d according to her official bio<\/a>.<\/p>\n One of those cases was Humphreys\u2019s.<\/p>\n Humphreys was convicted and sentenced to death in 2007 for the notorious double murder of 21-year-old Lori Brown and 33-year-old Cyndi Williams. The two women were killed northwest of Atlanta; the shocking crime generated so much pretrial publicity that Humphreys\u2019s trial was moved from Cobb County to Glynn County, nearly 300 miles away.<\/p>\n McCoy provided logistical and moral support to the victims\u2019 families throughout the monthlong trial. Members of Humphreys\u2019s defense team would later recall in affidavits that McCoy was extremely protective of them, blocking the legal team\u2019s efforts to introduce themselves. \u201cShe was a pitbull,\u201d one said.<\/p>\n The families were grateful for McCoy\u2019s support. In a profile published in McCoy\u2019s alma mater magazine the year after the trial, they praised her care and compassion. \u201cSometimes you see people who are tailor-made for a specific job,\u201d one said. McCoy was that person.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is hard to imagine a greater conflict of interest in a clemency case.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n But her appointment to the pardon board on December 1 was another matter. Where Humphreys\u2019s case was concerned, McCoy had a glaring conflict of interest. Although parole boards<\/a> are often stacked with former prosecutors and law enforcement officials, making many clemency decisions little more than a rubber stamp, McCoy was a member of the very team that sent Humphreys to death row \u2014 one with an especially deep connection to his victims. As the lawyers would later write in a court filing, \u201cit is hard to imagine a greater conflict of interest in a clemency case.\u201d<\/p>\n McCoy was not the only board member with a connection to Humphreys\u2019s case. Vice Chair Wayne Bennett was the Glynn County sheriff at the time of the trial, tasked with overseeing security and transportation for the sequestered jury \u2014 as well as Humphreys himself. To Humphreys\u2019s attorneys, Bennett\u2019s proximity to the victims, jurors, and defendant throughout the trial was too close for comfort. Under the board\u2019s ethics rules, members are obligated to avoid even the appearance of bias. It was obvious to the lawyers that both McCoy and Bennett should recuse themselves from the clemency hearing. Yet there was no sign they planned to to so.<\/p>\n On December 4, Assistant Federal Defender Nathan Potek emailed the board\u2019s legal counsel, La\u2019Quanda Smith. \u201cIt has come to our attention that two of the current Board members, Mr. Bennett and Ms. McCoy, have conflicts in Mr Humphreys\u2019 case arising from their respective roles at his trial,\u201d he wrote. \u201cCould you please let me know how the Board plans to address this issue and ensure that Mr. Humphreys has five conflict-free Board members to consider his clemency application?\u201d<\/p>\n Smith wrote back five days later. \u201cMr. Bennett and Ms. McCoy were duly appointed to the Board by Governor Kemp,\u201d she said. \u201cAs it is currently constituted, this Board plans to give due consideration to any clemency request made by Mr. Humphreys.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, the board planned to move forward with McCoy and Bennett\u2019s participation.<\/p>\n Georgia\u2019s pardon and parole board is uniquely powerful. While many death penalty states leave it to the governor to be the last word on clemency, in Georgia, the board acts alone. It also has the power to grant stays of execution, something ordinarily done by the courts. And while some states open clemency hearings to the public, Georgia\u2019s board members make decisions behind closed doors, with their votes classified as \u201cconfidential state secrets.\u201d<\/p>\n With the execution less than a week away, Humphreys\u2019s legal team filed an emergency motion in Fulton County Superior Court. It asked the court to direct McCoy and Bennett to recuse themselves and to order the board to grant a 90-day stay to allow time for two replacements. They also asked the court to block the Department of Corrections from executing their client until his clemency appeal had been considered by \u201ca five member board free from conflict.\u201d If a judge did not intervene, they wrote, \u201cMr. Humphreys\u2019s final request for mercy \u2014 his last chance to have his case heard \u2014 will be ruled upon by two people predisposed to vote against him.\u201d<\/p>\n A judge scheduled a hearing in Atlanta for December 15, the eve of Humphreys\u2019s clemency hearing. That morning, the Georgia Attorney General\u2019s Office filed a response to the emergency motion. McCoy would \u201cabstain\u201d from voting, it said. But it denied that Bennett should do the same. \u201cThe allegations concerning him do not come close to constituting a conflict of interest,\u201d the state lawyers wrote.<\/p>\n The hearing was still an hour away when lawyers on both sides learned that the board had temporarily suspended the execution. Its decision was delivered via paper copy, complete with a gold seal. The board did not give a reason for its decision. Nor did anyone \u2014 including the judge \u2014 know how long the stay of execution would remain in place. \u201cI don\u2019t have any information as to how long the suspension will last,\u201d the board\u2019s legal counsel told the judge. In Georgia, execution warrants are valid for a week. Humphreys could be killed anytime between noon on December 17 and noon on Christmas Eve.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n This was not<\/span> the first time Humphreys\u2019s case had raised concerns about bias.<\/p>\n His death sentence was rooted in an ugly confrontation between jurors at his trial. As members of the jury later told Humphreys\u2019s legal team, jurors had initially decided to vote to impose a sentence of life without parole. But one woman instead voted for death, leaving the jury split 11 to 1. The holdout juror \u201csnapped,\u201d as one person put it, screaming and throwing photos of the victims\u2019 bodies at the others. When the forewoman notified the court that the jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision, the judge instructed them to keep deliberating.<\/p>\n According to the forewoman, she and the other jurors got the mistaken impression that they had to unanimously vote on a sentence or Humphreys would walk free. They changed their votes to death. \u201cI cried the entire time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The holdout juror had also revealed during the trial deliberations that she\u2019d been a victim of violent crime. A man had broken into her apartment and attacked her \u2014 a fact that she withheld during jury selection. While she said during voir dire that she escaped before the man entered, she told fellow jurors that the intruder actually attacked her in her bed. The juror\u2019s actions amounted to \u201cextreme misconduct,\u201d Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider Humphreys\u2019s case. In a dissent<\/a> joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sotomayor wrote that the juror \u201cappears to have singlehandedly changed the verdict from life without parole to death.\u201d<\/p>\n In their motion, Humphreys\u2019s lawyers explained that they planned to discuss the juror misconduct at the clemency hearing. The clash between jurors had escalated to the point where it became violent: One juror punched a wall. This loss of control implicated Bennett, the former sheriff, who had been in charge of security \u2014 and whose experience would inevitably color his view of this evidence. At the hearing in Atlanta, where he testified via Zoom, Bennett said he\u2019d only just learned about the episode. \u201cThe trial is more important for us to control,\u201d he said. His participation in the trial \u201cwas minimal at best.\u201d<\/p>\n McCoy also testified via Zoom. She said that she\u2019d decided to abstain the night before. But it was not exactly clear what this meant. The state\u2019s brief suggested that McCoy would not participate in the hearing apart from voting to abstain. But Smith, the board\u2019s lawyer, said that McCoy would also be able to ask questions \u2014 an opportunity to influence the clemency discussion. Neither option fulfilled her ethical and legal obligations, Jessica Cino, a lawyer with the firm Krevolin & Horst who is representing Humphreys, told the judge. \u201cAbstention does not fix the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, it put Humphreys at a distinct disadvantage, since he needed three votes for clemency to avoid execution. \u201cA vote to abstain is effectively the same exact thing as a vote to deny, from Mr. Humphreys\u2019s perspective, correct?\u201d Cino\u2019s colleague asked Smith when she took the stand. \u201cCorrect,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney clearly grasped the problem with McCoy, whose conflicts \u201ckind of hit you in the face,\u201d as he put it. But the solution to the larger problem was less obvious. While the attorney general\u2019s office argued that the board did not necessarily need five members to preside over a clemency hearing, Georgia law said otherwise. And Smith testified that she\u2019d never seen such a hearing proceed with fewer than five board members.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n