Rare Stay Issued In Georgia Execution Set For Thursday

UPDATE: Thursday afternoon, the Board of Pardons and Paroles lifted the stay and denied clemency in Butts' case.

ATLANTA, GA — The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has issued a rare stay-of-execution for a death-row inmate who was condemned to die by lethal injection on Thursday.

Robert Earl Butts, Jr., 40, had been scheduled to die at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson for the 1996 murder of an off-duty prison guard in Milledgeville. The stay was issued less than 23 hours before his scheduled execution.

"Due to the considerable amount of additional information the board has received regarding the case and because the board understands the importance and seriousness of its authority and responsibility, a stay was issued,” said Steve Hayes, a spokesman for the parole board. "The board will continue consideration of the case and at a later date make a final decision."

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The stay is good for up to 90 days, but the parole board could lift it at any time. In Georgia, the Board of Pardons and Paroles is the only entity with the constitutional authority to grant clemency and commute or reduce a death-row inmate's sentence.

Butts was just 18 in 1996, when he and another man are accused of killing Donovan Corey Parks, an off-duty prison guard, in Milledgeville. His lawyers have argued there was no proof Butts actually pulled the trigger and have disputed that the two men were members of the Folks Nation street gang, as prosecutors claimed.

According to evidence and testimony in his case, Butts and Marion Wilson, who was also 18, asked Parks for a ride at a grocery store and he agreed. Butts pulled out a shotgun and forced Parks to drive to a nearby neighborhood, where he was shot in the head and left for dead, the jury ruled. Butts and Wilson stole Parks' car and drove to Atlanta.

They eventually took the car to Macon, where they burned it, and were arrested after they went back to Milledgeville. Butts was convicted in Baldwin County of murder, armed robbery, hijacking a motor vehicle, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime and possession of a sawed-off shotgun. He was sentenced to death on Nov. 21, 1998.

Butts would become the second death-row inmate in Georgia to be executed in 2018

In March, Carlton Gary, the so-called Columbus Stocking Strangler, became Georgia's first inmate to be executed this year. In Georgia, 71 inmates — 70 men and one woman — have been put to death since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

The state only conducted one execution in 2017. In September, Keith Leroy Tharpe was scheduled to become the second, but the U.S. Supreme Court issued a last-minute stay in the case to study whether racist comments made by a juror in his case tainted the verdict.

Earlier this month, the 11th District U.S. Court of Appeals rejected Tharpe's argument.

Photo courtesy Georgia Department of Corrections