Lawyers for Robert Earl Butts Jr. argue that false testimony put him on Georgia's Death Row.
In a clemency petition to the state Board of Pardons and Paroles, they argue that "There is no reliable evidence that Robert Jr. shot Donovan Parks or confessed to doing so."
The board is scheduled to vote Wednesday on whether to grant clemency to Butts, who is scheduled to die by lethal execution Thursday night.
Butts' lawyers argue that his co-defendant, Marion Wilson, actually killed Parks in 1996.
They say Wilson convinced two other jail inmates to testify that Butts confessed to the killing.
Those two witnesses later gave statements admitting they lied, their petition says.
One of those witnesses now says that Wilson admitted that he shot and killed Parks himself, "and that Robert Jr. had no idea he planned to do so."
A GBI agent also testified that, based on a polygraph, he believed that Wilson was the shooter.
Doubt about who was the actual shooter is just one reason why the board should grant clemency, Butts' lawyers say.
The lawyers also argue that:
- Butts survived "profound childhood neglect... as his parents left him to care for his younger siblings while they roamed the streets of Milledgeville, each in the grip of mental illness, drug addiction or both.
- Butts was only 18 at the time of the murder with an IQ of 80 -- effectively, they say, a "mental age" of 15. If he had been just 10 months younger, they write, it would be unconstitutional to execute him.
- Butts probably would not have received the death penalty today, at a time when Georgia juries are reluctant to hand down death sentences. Georgia juries “have essentially ceased imposing the death penalty on defendants like Robert Jr.," they say.
- Prosecutors used "inaccurate and prejudicial gang evidence" that painted him as a gang member. He was not, his lawyers say.
- Butts' remorse, his religious faith and his behavior in prison also argue for mercy, the lawyers say.
But Georgia courts have already rejected several appeals by Butts on those arguments.
Eight years ago, the petition says, Butts married Jennifer Rowe, a former corrections officer.
Rowe writes that Butts has also been a positive influence on her two children.
Butts has also collected his poetry and art in a self-published book, "A Portrait of My Journey, Memoirs from Death Row."
