In a hearing behind closed doors earlier in the day, Mobley's lawyers argued that he should not be executed because his victim's family favors a life sentence without parole an option not available at the time of Mobley's 1991 trial. He was convicted of murder for the Feb. 17, 1991, shooting of 24-year-old John Collins during a robbery at the Domino's Pizza in Oakwood, 45 miles northeast of Atlanta.
Mobley, 39, is scheduled to die Tuesday at 7:05 p.m. by lethal injection at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.
Mobley's attorneys said in a petition that all members of the victim's immediate family, as well as the prosecutor who tried the case and six of the 10 jurors in his trial would have favored a sentence of life without parole for Mobley if it had been an option. Two years after Mobley's trial, the Georgia Legislature passed a law allowing the sentencing option of life in prison without parole instead of just the death penalty in the most heinous murder cases.
``There is no question what they want, and that is commutation,'' attorney Mike Bowers said after the two-hour hearing Friday before the pardons board.
Bowers said he spoke to Mobley this week in prison. ``He's extremely tense,'' he said. ``Somebody once said, when you're facing the gallows, it'll really focus your head. He is focused on what life is all about and how remorseful he is.''
The victim's mother, Nina Collins, and two sisters met privately with the board earlier Friday to express their opposition to the death penalty, Bowers said.
Members of Mobley's family, including his parents and sister, declined to speak to reporters after testifying at the private hearing because they were too upset, the attorney said.
In a letter to the board, former Hall County Assistant District Attorney William Brownell Jr., the prosecutor at Mobley's trial, had said he felt death was not an inappropriate sentence in Mobley's case but wanted to support the victim's family.
``If both of John Collins' parents and the rest of John Collins' immediate family, are asking for Mr. Mobley's death sentence to be commuted to life without parole because his execution will cause them more pain, or for any other personal convictions through which they are now going, I defer to them and will respectfully join in their request,'' Brownell said.
Collins was alone in the pizza store when Mobley demanded the money from the cash register and store's office, then shot Collins in the back of the head.
Mobley previously was set to be executed in August 2002, but that was delayed by a federal appeals court to allow the U.S. Supreme Court time to rule on another case involving the rules for when condemned inmates can bring new evidence before a judge.
Prosecutors have called the murder particularly heinous because of Mobley's apparent lack of remorse.
While in jail, Mobley hung a Domino's Pizza box in his cell and had the word ``Domino'' tattooed on his back, according to fellow inmates. The prosecutor in the case said Mobley even told a guard he would ``apply to Domino's when he got out because he knew there was a management position open.''
Bowers said the pizza box only was used ``to cover up a vent'' and that Mobley, in fact, does not have such a tattoo. ``I've looked at him without his shirt on, and he does not have a Domino's tattoo,'' he said.
Mobley's execution will be Georgia's second this year.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2005/2/139998