CLARKESVILLE, Ga. — As Georgia moves closer to carrying out its first execution of the year, Clarkesville residents are organizing a silent vigil on the town square to oppose the death penalty.
Organizers plan to hold the vigil Wednesday, December 17, from 6:30 to 7 p.m. at the downtown gazebo. They say the event will move forward unless the courts order a stay or the governor grants clemency to death row inmate Stacey Humphreys.
Georgia plans to execute Humphreys, 52, on Dec. 17 for the 2003 killings of 33-year-old Cyndi Williams and 21-year-old Lori Brown. The shooting killed both women at the real estate office where they worked in an Atlanta suburb.
On Dec. 10, U.S. District Court Judge Leigh Martin May heard arguments in Atlanta. She ruled that Humphreys failed to show that carrying out the execution would violate his rights to due process and equal protection.
A call for mercy
As legal challenges continue in Atlanta, faith leaders and community members across Georgia are urging state leaders to show mercy. Organizers plan to deliver a clemency petition to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday, December 15, at 9 a.m. A prayer circle will follow Tuesday morning outside the board’s offices.
Georgia’s Catholic bishops are among those urging the state to halt the execution.
“We pray for both women, their families and all victims of violent crime. The emotional and psychological wounds that this kind of loss brings are not easily healed. As such, we must work toward a legal system and society in which that healing, rather than vengeance, is our aim,” the bishops wrote in an open letter.
Archbishop of Atlanta Gregory Hartmayer, Savannah Bishop Stephen Parkes, and Atlanta’s auxiliary bishops Joel Konzen, Bernard Shlesinger III, and John Tran urged the state to “prioritize fairness, healing and, ultimately, life itself.”
‘Not in our names’
Local organizers say those concerns are driving plans for Wednesday’s candlelight vigil in Clarkesville.
“The purpose of holding the vigil is to make Georgians aware of this execution by our state and to say that this execution is not done in our names,” vigil organizer Helen O’Brien told Now Habersham.
O’Brien said the jury in Humphreys’ case deadlocked 11-1 in favor of life without parole, “which is an option available in the state of Georgia that protects citizens and provides punishment for these murders without taking another life.”
She added that organizers ask attendees to bring “a spirit of respect for the seriousness of this execution and for the pain and suffering of the victims and their families.”
