An American who had been sentenced in 1996 to the death penaltyfor kidnapping, raping and then killing his ex-partner, is awaiting execution today in Georgia, in the southeastern United States.

Willie James Pye, 59, is expected to be executed Wednesday night by lethal injection at a Jackson penitentiary in the southeastern suburbs of Atlanta, the capital of a state that has not carried out an execution in four years.

If carried out, it will be the third execution in a row since the beginning of 2024 in the US, in addition to the one that was canceled at the last minute on February 28 in Idaho, as the lethal solution was not administered to the condemned person within the legal deadline.

Willie James Pye was found guilty of the 1993 murder of Alicia Yarbrough, a woman with whom he had a tumultuous relationship, whom he kidnapped, then raped along with two accomplices, including a 15-year-old.

His death sentence was overturned by an appeals court in 2021 after it was ruled that his court-appointed lawyer had mishandled his defense by failing to mention either the evidence of mental retardation or the poverty and abuse the defendant had suffered. during his childhood. However, this penalty was re-imposed in 2022.

In their request to commute the sentence, which was denied yesterday by the state’s parole board, current lawyers for Pai, an African-American, called his trial a “shocking relic of the past in which a racist and exhausted lawyer, who court appointee, Johnny Mostiller, effectively resigned from his post.”

Contracted by Spalding County to represent all indigent defendants in addition to those in his private practice, Johnny Mollister, who has died, handled hundreds of cases a year, routinely failing to defend his clients, according to the lawyers of the convicted person.

In its annual report in December, the Death Penalty Information Center estimated that the majority of inmates executed in the US in 2023 “likely would not be sentenced to death today,” given their mental health problems and traumatic experience. their past or due to legislative changes.