The agreement linked to Covid continues to protect some on the death flow of Georgia after execution
Atlanta – The fact that the COVVI-19 vaccine is not available for newborns, the group of prisoners of driving Georgia Georgia.
The executions in Georgia were interrupted during the Pandemic of COVID-19, and the office of the attorney general of the State concluded an agreement with the lawyers for people in the corridor of death to establish the conditions under which they could resume for a specific group of prisoners. At least one of these conditions, linked to the availability of the COVVI-19 vaccine, was not respected, and the request for an execution date for a prisoner covered by the agreement would violate the agreement, the judge of the Superior Court of Fulton, Shukura Ingram, judged.
The agreement includes three conditions which were to be met before the executions could be fixed for the prisoners concerned: the expiration of the COVID-19 judicial emergency of the State, the resumption of normal visits in state prisons and the availability of a COVVI-19 vaccine “to all members of the public”. Once these conditions are met, the State has agreed to give a notice of three months before continuing an execution mandate for one of the prisoners covered by the agreement and a notice of six months for the rest.
The state argued that the agreement should no longer apply, maintaining that the conditions have been met. But defense lawyers say it is still valid because the vaccine is not yet available for infants under 6 months of age, and visits to state prisons have not returned to normal.
Ingram’s decision, published on Friday, only addressed the question of vaccination. It plans to manage the problem of visits separately.
Ingram wrote that the arguments of the State “all sum up an attempt to rewrite the agreement”. The state is “(u) nhappy with the language he wrote” and wants to change it so that the condition is satisfied once the vaccines are available for “most public members”.
“But the courts cannot rewrite contracts to relieve part of their regrets,” she wrote. She judged that the agreement was “binding and enforceable”, that the condition of vaccination was not met and that the search for an execution mandate before the requirements were met.
The Office of the Attorney General of the State plans to appeal, a spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Ingram noted that Food and Drug Administration has approved clinical trials for infants under 6 months of age and that newborns receive other vaccines. This shows that it is possible that the COVVI-19 vaccine will finally be available for this age group, and the state should have predicted that it could take years, she wrote.
Experts from the two parties had testified that it was likely that the COVVI-19 vaccine would ultimately be available for babies under 6 months old, wrote Ingram.
It was before Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was appointed secretary in the United States. Kennedy announced last week that COVVI-19 vaccines are no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women. A few days later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, which said that these groups should get the gunshots, have been revised to say that vaccinations “can be given to these groups.
The agreement covers less than 10 of the 34 people currently in the corridor of the death of Georgia.
While Georgia has ceased to execute executions during the pandemic, the death penalty affairs continued to make their way into the judicial system and, while people exhausted their calls, they became eligible for execution.
A committee of a legal working group on COVID-19 in early 2021 asked the lawyers for people in the death corridor and the office of the State Prosecutor General to find terms under which executions could resume in complete safety. The two parties concluded the agreement in April 2021.
The agreement was applied only to people in the death corridor whose requests for rehearsal of their appeal were rejected by the 11th Circuit Court of American Appeals while the judicial urgency was in place. The agreement was to remain in force until August 1, 2022, or one year from the date on which the conditions were met – according to the later.
The legal struggle was born from a legal action brought when managers set an execution date of May 2022 for Virgil Delano Presnell Jr. The federal defender program, which represents Presnell, said that the State had violated the agreement because the conditions had not been fulfilled.
On the basis of this argument, a judge of the Superior Court of the County of Fulton interrupted the execution less than 24 hours earlier, and the Supreme Court of Georgia judged in December 2022 that the agreement was a binding contract.
People in the death corridor who are not covered by the agreement have since become eligible for execution. One of them, Willie James Pye, was put to death in March 2024.
