Lawyers For Convicted Child Rapist, Murderer Seek To Delay Execution: Reports

COBB COUNTY, GA — Attorneys for a Georgia man convicted in Cobb County for murdering an 8-year-old girl and raping a 10-year-old girl in 1976 have filed a lawsuit to delay next week’s execution, according to reports.

The Georgia Department of Corrections said last month that Virgil Delano Presnell Jr. is to be put to death at 7 p.m. on May 17 at the state prison in Jackson.

Presnell, 68, was convicted of abducting and attacking the two girls as they walked home from school in Cobb County, just outside Atlanta, on May 4, 1976. His lawyers filed an emergency motion Monday seeking to delay the execution, reported the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.

Attorneys from three Atlanta law firms said the state’s decision to execute Presnell violates a written agreement with the state Attorney General’s Office, reported the AJC. Put in place last year, it postponed most Georgia executions until after the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to WSB-TV, Presnell waited for a Cobb County elementary school to let out for the day and saw a 10-year-old girl walking home on a wooded trail. The next day he kidnapped her and her 8-year-old friend, according to evidence at trial outlined in a Georgia Supreme Court ruling, reported WSB.

Presnell was convicted in August 1976 on charges including malice murder, kidnapping and rape and was sentenced to death. In 1992 the death sentence was overturned, but was reinstated in March 1999, reported WSB.