GA Parole Board denies clemency for Stephen Mobley

Associated Press February 26, 2005
The execution of convicted killer Stephen Anthony Mobley should proceed as scheduled, the state parole board decided in denying his petition for clemency Friday.

In a nearly 2-hour hearing behind closed doors earlier in the day, Mobley's lawyers argued that he should not be executed because his victim's family favors a life sentence without parole - an option not available at the time of Mobley's 1991 trial.

Mobley was convicted of murder for the Feb. 17, 1991, shooting of 24-year-old John Collins during a robbery at the Domino's Pizza in Oakwood, 45 miles northeast of Atlanta.

Mobley's attorneys said in a petition that all members of the victim's immediate family, as well as the prosecutor who tried the case and six of the 10 jurors in his trial would have favored a sentence of life without parole for Mobley if it had been an option. Two years after Mobley's trial, the Georgia Legislature passed a law allowing the sentencing option of life in prison without parole instead of just the death penalty in the most heinous murder cases.

"There is no question what they want, and that is commutation," attorney Mike Bowers said after the hearing Friday before the pardons board.

After more than three hours of deliberation, the board denied clemency without elaborating on what led to its decision.

Bowers notified his client shortly after the decision was issued and said they were both "extremely disappointed."

Mobley, 39, is scheduled to die Tuesday at 7:05 p.m. by lethal injection at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson. The State Board of Pardons and Paroles heard his case Friday.

Bowers said a last-minute appeal to stay the execution was possible, but that he had not yet decided on a course of action. "It's always a potential," he said. "Is it something that will happen? I don't know yet."

Earlier Friday, the victim's mother, Nina Collins, and two sisters met privately with the board to express their opposition to the death penalty, Bowers said.

Members of Mobley's family, including his parents and sister, declined to speak to reporters after testifying at the hearing because they were too upset, the attorney said.

In a letter to the board, former Hall County Assistant District Attorney William Brownell Jr., the prosecutor at Mobley's trial, had said he felt death was not an inappropriate sentence in Mobley's case but wanted to support the victim's family.

Collins was alone in the pizza store when Mobley demanded the money from the cash register and store's office, then shot Collins in the back of the head.

Mobley previously was set to be executed in August 2002, but that was delayed by a federal appeals court to allow the U.S. Supreme Court time to rule on another case involving the rules for when condemned inmates can bring new evidence before a judge.

Prosecutors have called the murder particularly heinous because of Mobley's apparent lack of remorse.

While in jail, Mobley hung a Domino's Pizza box in his cell and had the word "Domino" tattooed on his back, according to fellow inmates. The prosecutor in the case said Mobley even told a guard he would "apply to Domino's when he got out because he knew there was a management position open."

Bowers said the pizza box only was used "to cover up a vent" and that he's seen for himself that Mobley, in fact, does not have such a tattoo.

Mobley's execution would be Georgia's second this year.

Bowers said his client has been introspective in the week leading up to his scheduled execution. "He's extremely tense," he said. "Somebody once said, when you're facing the gallows, it'll really focus your head. He is focused on what life is all about and how remorseful he is."

Source: Associated Press