Atlanta Journal Constitution

Editorial

GEORGIA: Stay of Execution the Right Thing

Fulton Superior Court Judge John Goger ruled wisely Tuesday to stay the execution of Wallace Fugate until the Board of Pardons and Paroles has a 5th member as required by the Georgia Constitution.

 The case poses larger issues as well. Unlike the 29 individuals put to death by Georgia since 1976, Fugate has no prior criminal record and there were no aggravating circumstances of the sort normally required for imposition of the death penalty. 3 of the 12 jurors in the case have stated in sworn affidavits that they would have voted for life without parole instead of the death penalty had they been given that option.

 Fugate, who turned himself in immediately after his wife died of a gunshot, still contends his gun went off accidentally during a struggle between the couple, who had divorced after a 20-year marriage. He had no record of prior domestic abuse. Prosecutors had to stretch to find the required "aggravating" factor, arguing that Fugate "kidnapped" his wife when he carried her from her house to a car in order to drive to the Putnam County sheriff's office for a mediation of their dispute.

 It would be hard for the staunchest death penalty proponent to contend that Fugate's 2-day trial, perhaps the shortest in state capital crime history, was fair. He couldn't afford to hire a lawyer and neither of the two lawyers appointed to represent him would meet even the minimum qualifications now required by the Georgia Supreme Court for death penalty lawyers. They conducted no investigation of the facts, hired no ballistic experts to counter those for the prosecution, and called only one of 35 suggested character witnesses at a 27-minute penalty hearing in which death was imposed. Eatonton friends and neighbors, never summoned to testify, say Fugate, a carpenter, worked hard and had a record of unselfish community service.

 Unless Goger is overruled by the state supreme court, a full five-member parole board must reconsider the Fugate case. It should pay particular attention to the role played by the state's sorry system of indigent defense. In counties that provide well-trained lawyers for the poor, Fugate would most likely have received a life sentence.

 Gov. Roy Barnes, a lawyer, once acknowledged to graduating law students that in Georgia, "far too many people face the possibility of an unjust outcome because they must attempt to navigate an often complicated legal system without the benefit of competent counsel." Nowhere is that more important than in death-penalty cases. Barnes should appoint a panel to review the cases of every death row inmate whose lawyers would not meet today's standards of competency.

Atlanta Journal Constitution

Tina Trent of St. Simons writes about the criminal justice system)

 Spare life, but concede killer is no victim

Opinion

An AJC editorial last week asserted that the courts of Georgia were dangerously remiss in upholding the death sentence of Wallace Fugate, who killed his ex-wife in 1991. "[T]here is ample evidence to suggest that Fugate shot his wife accidentally," the editorial said.

 There is not. The murder committed by Wallace Fugate was particularly terror-drenched and brutal. Armed with a gun, Fugate broke into his ex-wife's home through a window and lay in wait for 8 hours. When she entered the house, he attacked her. When she attempted to call the police, he pistol-whipped her, fired his gun to subdue her and continued beating her as he dragged her toward his van. There, he shot her in the head.

 What part of this was accidental? Fugate maintains that the gun fired into his wife's head accidentally, possibly due to a manufacturing defect. He has filed several appeals on the grounds that his court-appointed attorneys failed to raise the subject of this alleged defect with the jurors at his trial.

 Each of these appeals was rejected by the courts, yet on the grounds of this flimsy claim, Fugate has attracted the attention of anti-death- penalty activists searching for a story with media "legs." And the media, in this case, has complied all too well, publishing articles and editorials that trumpet Fugate's claims of insufficient legal representation without providing the public with any of the facts that the courts used to reject this complaint over and over again, let alone the facts that resulted in Fugate's conviction in the 1st place.

 Forget the broken basement window, the gun barrel crashing down on Pattie Fugate's neck. Forget the 50 blows she received while being dragged from her living room to her ex-husband's van. Forget the finger that pulled the trigger enough, defect or no defect, to end her life.

 The AJC's editors saw fit to report that Wallace Fugate had no prior criminal convictions, but they didn't mention the restraining order taken out against him because he threatened to kill Pattie Fugate "if he ever caught her alone." They described his involvement in community organizations but didn't tell how he disabled his son's rifle so the boy couldn't defend his mother. They described his fine carpentry skills but left out the part about him hammering his ex-wife's skull with a gun as she tried to dial 911. They made much of the existence of a discrepancy in his son's eyewitness testimony but avoided detailed description of the discrepancy itself -- whether the boy saw his father's hand grasping his mother's head an instant before or after the bullet tore through her skull.

 Wallace Fugate is no victim, but he is being depicted as one. I imagine this is because the editors want to articulate their sincere opposition to the death penalty, but there is no excuse for presenting to the public a version of the facts and legal issues surrounding Pattie Fugate's murder that cannot be called accurate. Unfortunately, the legal endgame arising from the death penalty appeals process often leads to this type of skewing of the facts -- about the victim's suffering and the criminal's responsibility and malice.

 By all means, Wallace Fugate's sentence should be commuted to life in prison; the state should not put prisoners to death. But death penalty opponents, including those on the AJC's editorial board, might actually find more public support for their position if they refrained from denying the criminal's culpability or the horror of the crime.