ATLANTA — The Georgia Supreme Court ruled that COVID-19-focused for public access that had, temporarily, stalled executions for nine prisoners were no longer a factor.
According to the court ruling, filed Tuesday, Georgia’s highest court will allow the executions, saying a previous ruling at a lower court had been erroneous.
The start of the case was related to a scheduled execution of Virgil Delano Presnell, Jr., the longest serving death row inmate in Georgia.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Shukura Ingram ruled last June that as executions in Georgia were halted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the state attorney general’s office agreed with lawyers that those on death row were able to set the terms under which executions could resume, death row inmates were protected from being put to death.
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The State of Georgia had entered into an agreement that prevented the executions of a portion of the state’s death row inmates to not be executed if their requests for rehearings were denied during the COVID emergency.
The terms of the agreement also prevent the identities of the other inmates from being revealed. Georgia has 33 inmates currently on death row.
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In the Tuesday ruling, the justices wrote that “Given that the State produced undisputed evidence that the supply of the COVID-19 vaccine is adequate for all members of the public to obtain the vaccine and that no legal impediment exists for all members of the public to be vaccinated, if deemed medically appropriate, the trial court erred in concluding that the COVID-19 vaccine was not ‘readily available’ to all members of the public.”
Ingram ruled that the inability for all Georgians, particularly infants, to get COVID vaccines meant that under the agreement’s conditions, the executions could not happen.
The Georgia Supreme Court has reversed the decision, saying that the supply of vaccines for COVID-19 exceed demand and that the emergency order had ended.
As a result, the inmates will no longer have a pandemic-related block in place to prevent their executions.
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