Thist week's execution of a convicted Lumpkin County murderer would be the second of a northeast Georgia killer in the past 14 months but there are others from the area awaiting execution who have been on death row a lot longer than he has.
Stephen Frederick Spears was convicted and sentenced in 2007. He is on death row for the 2001 murder of Sherri Holland, a former girlfriend. Holland was killed at her Lumpkin County home.
Kelly Gissendaner of Barrow County was executed Sept. 30, 2015, for the murder-for-hire of her husband Douglas Gissendaner in 1997.
But unlike Gissendaner and countless other death row inmates in Georgia, Spears' execution will have been a swift one in terms of the number of years he spent on death row compared to how long many of Georgia's condemned live after their sentences are handed down.
Take Scotty Morrow, for instance. Morrow was sentenced to death in 1999 for the 1994 murders of his girlfriend, Barbara Ann Young and another woman, Tonya Woods, at a south Gainesville residence. A third woman was also shot, but survived.
Then, there's David Scott Franks. He's been facing execution since 1998 for the 1994 murder of Deborah Wilson of Gainesville, while searching for money he believed was in her home.
One man, convicted in Gainesville, met his fate in eleven years ago. Stephen Anthony Mobley was executed in 1995 for the 1991 murder of Oakwood pizza store manager John C. Collins. Collins was killed during a robbery at the Domino's on Mundy Mill Road.
A third inmate from the area appeared headed for execution in 2014 until the state Board of Pardons and Paroles stepped in. Tommy Lee Waldrip, 70, was convicted in 1991 of killing a Dawson County convenience store clerk, Keith Evans, who was scheduled to testify against Waldrip's son in an armed robbery trial.
Perhaps the most well-known death row inmate from the area in recent years was never executed but is no longer alive. Jack Howard Potts was convicted of kidnapping and murder in the death of Michael Priest, 24, of Marietta in a field in Forsyth County 41 years ago. Potts at one time, not long after he was convicted, announced that he did not want to appearl his case any further - which is what Spears has done - and was ready to die. But, at the last moment, he opted for an appeal. He went through similar scenarios with state prisons officials several times - his story gaining attention from wire services and major newspapers all over the country. He died in prison of liver cancer in 2005.
According to the state Department of Corrections, there were 72 inmates on death row in Georgia at the start of the year, the latest figure available. All are men, and, like Spears, Morrow and Franks, some are from northeast Georgia.
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(EDITOR'S NOTE: AccessWDUN's Ken Stanford was a media witness to the execution of Stephen Anthony Mobley and wrote a column for AccessWDUN about the experience in the days immediately after Mobley was put to death.)
