Parole board to continue deliberating death row inmate's clemency request

<p>Georgia's parole board was expected to continue deliberating Tuesday the clemency request of a death row inmate scheduled to be executed later that evening for killing and dismembering a lawyer in 1984.</p><p>A hearing for Robert Dale Conklin, 44, was held Monday. No decision was made by the afternoon.</p><p>Board spokeswoman Kim Patton-Johnson said the panel was not expected to make a decision until Tuesday. She did not say what was holding things up. Conklin's execution is scheduled for Tuesday evening.</p><p>Conklin was convicted of fatally stabbing 28-year-old George Crooks with a screwdriver during an altercation in Conklin's Atlanta apartment. The two were romantically involved.</p><p>Conklin says he was fending off an attempted rape at the time of the attack. Prosecutors say Conklin acted with malice and after killing Crooks, he cut up the victim's body and disposed of the pieces in trash bags and a garbage disposal to avoid being caught.</p><p>Last week, defense lawyers filed a motion challenging Conklin's incarceration. In the motion in Butts County Superior Court, the lawyers said Conklin deserves a new trial and they asked a judge to at least hold a hearing at which Conklin can offer proof for his self-defense claims.</p><p>In the clemency petition reviewed at Monday's hearing, defense lawyers presented affidavits from several jurors who convicted Conklin who said they don't believe he should be executed.</p><p>Another affidavit from the former medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Crooks' body also said Conklin should not be executed. The doctor, Saleh Zaki, also wrote of Crooks' death that he does not "believe that this was necessarily an intentional murder case."</p><p>"The use of a screwdriver showed that there was no plan to kill," Zaki said in his June 16 affidavit. "Based on my experience, no one planning to kill someone else, particularly a person as large as Mr. Crooks, would select a screwdriver as a murder weapon."</p><p>At the trial, prosecutors presented evidence that a knife was also used to inflict wounds prior to Crooks' death, thus weakening the self-defense claim, court records say. Defense lawyers have argued the knife was only used after Crooks was dead, and Zaki's affidavit made no mention of a knife.</p><p>A year before the killing, Conklin was released on parole from prison in Illinois following burglary, theft and armed robbery convictions.</p><p>Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said last week that he believes Conklin deserves to be executed, and he said he would oppose clemency at Monday's hearing, which was closed to the public.</p><p>The execution would be Georgia's third this year.</p>

http://accesswdun.com/article/2005/7/143047