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| Death-row inmate who saved 2 lives to get new sentencing hearing |
| By Atlanta Journal-Constitution |
| Published: 06/07/2005 |
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A Georgia death-row inmate once dubbed a "guardian angel" for saving two people's lives must receive a new sentencing trial, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday. The court threw out the capital sentence against William Marvin Gulley after finding his trial lawyers failed to show jurors that Gulley had previously saved the lives of two people in Atlanta during a three-day span in 1992. In 1998, a Dougherty County jury sentenced Gulley to death for killing an 81-year-old Albany woman and then raping her 60-year-old daughter. Gulley had broken into the house in December 1994 and beat both women with a stick and a shotgun after they returned home and found him inside. He then stabbed Mary Garner to death before raping her daughter. During the trial, prosecutors also presented evidence that Gulley killed a 49-year-old woman and her 84-year-old mother in East Point only a week before the incident in Albany. He was never formally charged in those killings. Before Gulley's trial, his defense team became aware of a 1992 Atlanta Constitution article about Gulley saving two lives. But the lawyers did not find any of the survivors or their family members. Justice George Carley, writing for a unanimous court, wrote that "it appears none of Gulley's attorneys took responsibility to ensure that the reports of his saving two lives were properly investigated," even though there were "fairly obvious avenues" to explore. "Whatever our own opinions may be about the sentencing verdict in this case . . . there is a reasonable probability that evidence of Gulley's having saved two persons' lives, at risk to his own life, would have changed that sentencing verdict," Carley wrote. |
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I was already expecting the decision of Supreme Court. You need to have professional cv writing service now. This inmate saved two precious lives and I think it is totally fair to give him another chance of proving himself innocent.