<p>The Georgia Supreme Court has thrown out the death sentence of a man who is credited with saving two people's lives, saying his lawyers failed to provide evidence of the good deeds during his trial.</p><p>The court on Monday ordered William Marvin Gulley be re-sentenced for killing an 81-year-old Albany woman and raping the woman's 60-year-old daughter.</p><p>Gulley's lawyers did not show that Gulley had rescued two people over a three-day period in Atlanta in 1992, the justices found. Gulley had even been called a guardian angel.</p><p>Writing for an unanimous court, Justice George Carley said, "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 pursue.</p><p>"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.</p><p>Gulley was sentenced to death in 1998 in Dougherty County for the murder and rape. Gulley had broken into the women's house in December 1994 to steal a television. He beat both of them with a stick and a shotgun after they returned home, interrupting the burglary. He bound Mary Garner and stabbed her in the chest before raping her daughter.</p><p>During the trial, prosecutors also presented evidence implicating Gulley in the death of a 49-year-old woman and her 84-year-old mother in East Point a week before the Albany killing. Gulley has never been formally charged in the East Point killings.</p><p>Before the trial, Gulley's lawyers learned of a 1992 news article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about Gulley saving two people. But the lawyers failed to verify the story and never found either of the two survivors or their family members.</p><p>Gulley, who worked as a painter, was credited with saving co-worker Dan O'Connor's life at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Atlanta's Buckhead neighborhood after O'Connor struck an electric wire with his power drill as he stood on a ladder. Gulley saw O'Connor convulsing and kicked the ladder away, breaking contact with the electrical current.</p><p>Two days later, Gulley brought flowers to O'Connor at Grady Memorial Hospital where he was being treated. When Gulley got off the 10th-floor elevator, a mentally disturbed patient ran past him, smashed a window and tried to jump. But with the help of O'Connor's brother, Gulley pulled the woman inside before she could jump.</p><p>Gulley, whose arm was cut during the struggle, was a "guardian angel," O'Connor's wife was quoted as saying.</p><p>Brian Kammer, Gulley's lawyer in the appeal, praised the court's decision.</p><p>"It affirms that thorough investigation can provide a jury with compelling mitigating evidence that might sway their minds," Kammer said.</p><p>But Dougherty County District Attorney Ken Hodges expressed disappointment with the ruling. The death sentence is warranted, he said, regardless how many lives Gulley saved.</p><p>The district attorney's office will talk to the victims' family about what to do next, Hodges said. The prosecutor noted that before the trial, Gulley was offered the chance to plead guilty and get a life sentence but did not accept it before a deadline imposed by the prosecution.</p>
