Pye’s attorneys are requesting clemency, saying he is intellectually disabled and was represented nearly three decades ago by a “racist, overworked public defender” who “shrugged off any meaningful investment in the case.” The trial lawyer has since died.
Having exhausted his appeal efforts in both state and federal court, Pye’s fate lies in the hands of the parole board. If carried out Wednesday evening, Pye’s execution by lethal injection would be the first in Georgia in more than four years. The pandemic paused the procedures.
The board has held four clemency hearings since October 2019. The last commutation of a death-row inmate was Jimmy Fletcher Meders, who sentence was commuted to life without the possibility of parole in January 2020. Clemency was denied to Ray Jefferson Cromartie on October 29, 2019; to Donnie Cleveland Lance on January 28, 2020 and to Virgil Presnell on May 16, 2022.
Cromartie was executed November 13, 2019; Lance was executed on January 29, 2020, while Presnell has not been executed due to an injunction in Fulton County.
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