- Nov 14

GEORGIA: U.S. appeals court stays execution of Georgia killer

 By Paul Simao

 ATLANTA, A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday granted a last-minute stay of execution to a Georgia man convicted of killing his wife and father-in-law during a domestic dispute in 1979.

 A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta issued the stay so that it could hear a lawsuit filed by death row inmate Fred Gilreath against the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles.

 Gilreath, 63, was scheduled to be executed in the death chamber at the state prison in Jackson, about 50 miles (80 km) south of Atlanta on Wednesday night. The stay will remain in effect until 3 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT) on Thursday.

 "We're on hold until then," said Georgia Department of Corrections spokesman Scott Stallings.

 Gilreath's lawsuit claims that board members acted improperly on Tuesday  when they voted to reject his request to have the death sentence commuted to  life in prison. The lawsuit noted that one of the five members of the board was not present for the vote.

 Gilreath was sentenced to death for shooting his wife Linda, 28, and her father Gerritt Van Leeuwen, 57, on May 11, 1979. Linda Gilreath had been planning to file for divorce to get away from her husband, later described in court as an abusive alcoholic.

 Gilreath's wife was shot five times with a rifle and once in the face with a shotgun. Her father was shot several times with a rifle, shotgun and handgun. Police found gasoline on both bodies and in the kitchen of the Gilreath house.

 Defense lawyers as well as Gilreath's children had urged state officials to show leniency on the grounds that the killings were a crime of passion fueled by alcohol and intense emotions.

 If the execution proceeds, Gilreath would become the third inmate to be put to death in Georgia since the state Supreme Court ruled last month that the use of the electric chair to execute inmates was unconstitutional because it inflicted needless suffering.

 Georgia switched to lethal injection after the ruling.

 Alabama and Nebraska are the only states that still rely solely on electrocution to execute inmates. The other 35 states with the death penalty use lethal injection or give the inmate a choice in deciding the method of execution.

 Including Gilreath, there are 126 prisoners on Georgia's death row.