BUTTS COUNTY, Ga. — Jimmy Fletcher Meders is set to be executed this week for the 1987 killing of convenience store clerk Don Anderson in coastal Glynn County.
Meders spent the afternoon of Oct. 13, 1987, drinking alcohol with three men, Randy Harris, Bill Arnold and Greg Creel. After leaving Harris and driving around for hours, Meders, Creel and Arnold ended up at a convenience store about 2:30 a.m. the next morning.
While they were there, Anderson was fatally shot in the chest and head, and more than $30 was taken from the cash register.
Meders testified at his trial that all three men went inside, and Arnold shot Anderson and told Meders to grab the cash. Arnold and Creel both testified that only Creel and Meders entered the store, and Meders shot the clerk and took the money.
Harris, who wasn't at the store, testified Meders confessed to him afterward that he had killed a man for $38.
Meders was the only one charged in the robbery and killing.
For his last meal, Meders requested 10 chicken strips, two bacon cheeseburgers, french fries, soda, and a pint of vanilla ice cream.
[Inmate to be executed Jan. 16 says DNA tests will show he’s no killer]
Meders’ lawyers want the state parole board to convert his sentence to life without the possibility of parole, arguing that’s what the jury would have chosen if given the chance.
In a clemency application filed with the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, Meders’ lawyers urged board members to spare his life. The board is the only authority in Georgia that can commute a death sentence. It plans to hold a closed-door clemency hearing Wednesday.
Meders was sentenced in 1989, four years before a sentence of life without the possibility of parole was allowed in capital cases. It’s clear that his jurors would have preferred to have had that option, lawyer Michael Admirand wrote in the clemency petition. He cited a note that jurors wrote to the judge after deliberating for about 20 minutes.
“If the Jury recommends that the accused be sentence to life imprisonment, can the Jury recommend that the sentence be carried out without Parole??” the jurors asked.
Additionally, the six jurors who are still alive and able to remember the deliberations said in sworn statements collected by Meders' attorneys that they would have chosen life without parole. They didn't believe he was among the “worst of the worst” criminals who deserve the death penalty, but they also didn't want him released, Admirand wrote.
“By commuting Meders’ sentence to life without parole, this Board would not be overturning the jury’s determination as to the appropriate sentence. It would be effectuating it,” Admirand wrote.
There have been 74 men and one woman executed in Georgia since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. If executed, Meders will be the 53rd inmate put to death by lethal injection. There are presently 43 men and one woman under death sentence in Georgia.
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