Prosecutors announced their decision involving Lynn Turner at a hearing in Cumming, according to the court clerk's office. A grand jury indicted Turner in October on a charge of malice murder in the 2001 death of Forsyth County firefighter Randy Thompson.
``Certainly, this type of murder warrants it,'' prosecutor Jack Mallard said of the death penalty.
He said the decision was based in part on the painful way the victim died and Turner having been convicted of a prior murder, adding that Thompson's family supported his decision. A jury will still have the option of sentencing Turner to life in prison with or without parole. No trial date has been set.
Turner, 36, is currently serving a life sentence for fatally poisoning her 31-year-old husband, Cobb County police officer Glenn Turner, in 1995. She was convicted of murder in that case in May.
That trial hinged on Lynn Turner's alleged involvement in the antifreeze poisoning death of Thompson, 32. Though she hadn't been charged at the time in that case, prosecutors won a judge's approval to draw on similarities between the two men's deaths at the trial over Glenn Turner's death.
Prosecutors said Lynn Turner wanted to collect on the men's life insurance. Defense lawyers have argued the cases were largely circumstantial and noted that authorities initially ruled that both men had died of natural causes. Mallard said Tuesday the financial motive was another factor in his decision to seek the death penalty in the Thompson case.
It wasn't until a few months after Thompson's death that police launched a criminal investigation. Police said new testing on the men's bodies showed they were poisoned with ethylene glycol, the sweet, odorless chemical in antifreeze.
Lynn Turner, a former 911 operator, judge's aide, sheriff's assistant and district attorney's secretary, has maintained her innocence. She is seeking a new trial in the case of her husband's death. A hearing on that issue was postponed from Tuesday to Feb. 15.
Defense lawyer Jimmy Berry did not immediately return several calls Tuesday seeking comment.
Of the 113 people currently on death row in Georgia, only one is a woman, and only one woman Lena Baker in 1945 has been executed in the state in modern times, according to Department of Corrections records.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2004/12/145691