USA: Georgia sets first execution in four years

Willie Pye is scheduled to be executed in Georgia on 20 March 2024. Now 58, he was sentenced to death for a murder committed in 1992 when he was 27. In 2021, federal judges overturned the death sentence because of the trial lawyer’s failure to investigate and present evidence of Pye’s significantly sub-average intellectual functioning and traumatic childhood. This decision was reversed on appeal, not on the merits but on procedural grounds under a 1996 federal law. His lawyers have presented evidence that he has intellectual disability, but under Georgia’s requirement to prove this ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’, his death sentence has been upheld.