Texas Set to Execute LeJames Norman Wednesday; Georgia Judge Stays Stacey Humphreys
Texas was preparing Wednesday to execute LeJames Norman, 40, for the 2005 shooting deaths of three people inside a rural home, while a Georgia judge temporarily halted a separate execution that had been scheduled for the same evening.
Norman is set to die by injection of the sedative pentobarbital at 6 p.m. CDT at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. If the execution goes forward, it would be Texas's fifth this year. Georgia has yet to carry out an execution this year. Florida remains the nation's busiest death chamber, accounting for more than half of the 25 executions already carried out in the U.S. this year.
Norman was sentenced to death in the fatal shootings of Samuel Roberts, 24, Tiffani Peacock, 18, and Celso Lopez, 38, at the home they shared in Edna, a small rural city about 100 miles southwest of Houston. Court records show Norman and Ker'Sean Ramey believed there was cocaine in the house and hoped to steal it, but they found no drugs and shot the three victims.
Lopez was shot four times, including three times in the back of the head. Peacock was shot twice in the head. Roberts was shot five times in the chest, neck and head.
Norman was arrested about five months after the killings while trying to cross back into the U.S. from Mexico. He pleaded guilty to capital murder, leaving a jury to decide his punishment. Ramey also was convicted in the shootings and sentenced to death; his execution is scheduled for next week.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted Monday against commuting Norman's sentence or recommending a 90-day reprieve. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals also denied a motion from Norman's attorneys for a stay based on claims about actions by the prosecution. His attorneys have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review that decision. In 2017, the high court refused to review an appeal from Norman that raised questions about the competence of his trial attorneys.
In Georgia, Stacey Humphreys, 53, had been scheduled to die at 7 p.m. EDT at the state prison near Jackson. He was convicted of malice murder and other crimes in the 2003 killings of Cyndi Williams, 33, and Lori Brown, 21.
The two women were working as real estate agents for a new subdivision in Powder Springs, an Atlanta suburb. According to evidence at trial, Humphreys entered the sales office in a model home around midday on Nov. 3, 2003, forced them to strip naked and give him their bank PINs, then fatally shot them.
Humphreys withdrew more than $3,000 from the women's bank accounts, court filings show. He told police after his arrest that he had recently taken out high-interest payday loans and needed money for a payment on his truck. Witnesses reported seeing a man matching Humphreys' description at the sales office and a vehicle in the parking lot that matched his black Dodge Durango. Police tried to question him at his Dunwoody home days later; he fled and was arrested in Wisconsin after a high-speed chase.
A judge halted Humphreys' execution late Tuesday after his lawyers filed a petition seeking a resentencing under a new state law that allows victims of abuse to have their sentences reconsidered and reduced if they can tie their crimes to abuse they suffered. A lawyer for the state told the judge that if a stay were ordered, the state would immediately appeal in hopes of keeping the execution on track for Wednesday evening. The judge wrote that if an appellate court rules before the scheduled execution time Wednesday that Humphreys is not entitled to a hearing on his petition, he will consider lifting the stay so the execution can proceed.
Humphreys' lawyers also have argued that he should be resentenced because his death sentence was tainted by a biased juror who lied during jury selection and bullied other jurors into voting for death. Courts have repeatedly rejected those arguments for procedural reasons, though U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by the other two liberal justices, argued last year that the issue should be explored further rather than left caught in a web of procedural barriers.
His clemency application was heard by only four members of the five-person State Board of Pardons and Paroles. A judge ordered one board member to recuse herself, agreeing with Humphreys' legal team that there was a conflict of interest because she previously worked as a victim advocate with the Cobb County district attorney's office and had worked with the victims in his case. The parole board denied clemency Tuesday.
The simultaneous developments underscore how capital punishment remains concentrated in a handful of states and how legal fights over executions often turn on procedure, sentencing claims and last-minute court rulings. Texas and Florida have driven much of this year's execution volume, while Georgia's temporary stay leaves Humphreys' case in limbo and could be resolved by appellate action before Wednesday evening.
Brumback reported from Atlanta, and Stengle reported from Dallas.