The man who was convicted of the murder of an 8-year-old and raped a 10-year-old girl in 1976, was to be executed but halted on Tuesday night following a judge’s decision on Monday to stay the execution.
Georgia man, Virgil Delano Presnell Jr., 68, abducted Lori Ann Smith, 8, and her 10-year-old friend while they were walking back home from elementary school in Cobb County 46 years ago.
Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles denies clemency of Virgir. The state Department of Corrections now has until May 24 to carry out the execution, according to his execution warrant.
The execution is scheduled due to lawsuits filed, by the Federal Defender Program on behalf of Presnell’s lawyers that allege the state is violating an agreement that put executions on hold during the coronavirus pandemic and set stipulations on when they could continue.
In which the lawsuit says that under an agreement between Attorney General Chris Carr’s office and lawyers who represent people on death row, the state would halt almost all executions until six months after three conditions had been met: the expiration of the state’s COVID-19 judicial emergency, the resumption of normal visitation at state prisons and the availability of a COVID-19 vaccine “to all members of the public.”
The state appealed the judge’s order to the Georgia Supreme Court on Tuesday, but the court had not ruled by 7 p.m. ET when Presnell’s execution was presumed to take place. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Shermela Williams ordered the stay.
The judicial emergency expired in June, prisons are still using a modified visitation policy, and children under 5 still can’t get vaccinated, Presnell’s lawyers argue. Assuring he would be the first person to be executed in Georgia this year
