Man to be executed 30 years after kidnapping and shooting dead ex-girlfriend
A man who kidnapped his ex-girlfriend from her home, leaving her infant behind, before sexually assaulting her and driving her to a dirt road where he shot and killed her has had a date set for his execution.
Willie James Pye killed his ex-girlfriend Alicia Lynn Yarbrough 30 years ago. Now he is set to be put to death in Georgia's first execution in over four years.
A judge has signed the order for Pye's execution, which is scheduled for 7 pm on March 20. The judge has set an execution window from noon that day until noon on March 27. Executions in Georgia are carried out at the state prison in Jackson using the sedative pentobarbital - the lethal injection.
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Willie James Pye's case highlights Georgia's return to capital punishment (Georgia Department of Corrections)
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If executed, 59-year-old Pye would be the first person to be put to death in Georgia since January 2020. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, executions were effectively stopped for a certain group of people on Georgia's death row. This was due to an agreement between their lawyers and the state.
Pye's lawyer mentioned this agreement when asking a court to stop the state from seeking an execution warrant against him for now. Pye and Alicia had been dating on and off. However, at the time of her death, Alicia was living with another man. According to court documents, Pye, Chester Adams and a 15-year-old boy planned to rob that man. They bought a handgun before going to a party in Griffin, say prosecutors.
The group left the party around midnight and went to Alicia's house, while she was there alone with her baby. They barged into her home, stole a ring and necklace, and took her with them when they left, leaving her baby behind, according to prosecutors.
They then drove the mother to a motel, where they sexually assaulted her in turns and then left the motel with her in the teenager's car, the prosecutors continued. They went onto a dirt road where Pye ordered Alicia out of the car, made her lie face down and shot her three times, say court documents.
Alicia's body was found just hours after her death on November 17, 1993. Pye, Adams and the teen were arrested shortly afterwards. Whilst Pye and Adams denied any knowledge of Alicia's death, the teenager broke down and implicated the other two.
Pye was convicted in 1996 (Bloomberg via Getty Images)The teenager managed to reach a plea deal with prosecutors and was a key witness in Pye's trial. A jury, in June 1996, convicted Pye on charges of malicious murder, kidnapping that resulted in physical injury, armed robbery, rape and burglary, leading to a death sentence.
Pye's legal team has been consistently making the case in court for his resentencing, arguing that his trial lawyer did not properly prepare for the sentencing phase. They contended that his trial attorney failed to investigate sufficiently into his "life, background, physical and psychiatric health" to present mitigating evidence to the jury during the pronouncement of the sentence.
They presented evidence that his childhood was characterized by poverty, abuse and neglect. They also argued that he suffered from frontal-lobe brain damage, potentially caused by fetal alcohol syndrome, that harmed his ability to plan and control his impulses.
A federal judge rejected those claims, but a three-judge panel of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Pye's lawyers in April 2021. But then the case was reheard by the full federal appeals court, which overturned the panel ruling in October 2022.
Pye faces death by lethal injection (AFP via Getty Images)Adams, now 55, pleaded guilty in April 1997 to charges of malice murder, kidnapping with bodily injury, armed robbery, rape and aggravated sodomy. He was handed five consecutive life prison sentences and remains behind bars.
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When Georgia courts were under a judicial emergency because of the coronavirus pandemic, lawyers for a group of people on death row entered into an agreement with the office of state Attorney General Chris Carr to temporarily suspend executions and establish conditions under which they could resume. The agreement said that, with one named exception, executions wouldn't resume 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 vaccine "to all members of the public."
The agreement applied to death-sentenced prisoners whose requests to have their petitions reheard were denied by the 11th Circuit while the judicial emergency was in place. That agreement is currently the subject of litigation in Fulton County Superior Court with executions for the prisoners in question on hold for now.
Pye's lawyer argued in a court filing Wednesday that he qualifies as a third-party beneficiary of that agreement even though the 11th Circuit's final rejection of his request for a rehearing came in March 2023. He asked the court to allow him to join the pending litigation, which would protect him from execution for the time being.
Lawyers for the state responded in a filing Thursday that Pye was not covered by the agreement and should not be allowed to join the pending litigation. The judge who signed the execution order also wrote that Pye is not part of the agreement and that it, therefore, does not prevent his execution from proceeding.
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