reality_watcher

This evening, with only 2 1/2 hours left before Samuel David Crowe was to be executed, the Georgia State Board of Pardons & Paroles granted clemency to 47 year old admitted killer, Samuel David Crowe. His sentenced was commuted to Life without Parole. This is the third time since 1995 that the Board has granted clemency.

Crowe was sentenced to death after he admittedly robbed and murdered 39 year old Joe Pala, the manager of Wickes Lumber Company, in Douglas County, Georgia. On March 2, 1988, Crowe, a former co-worker of Pala’s, came by while Pala was closing and he was invited to enter the store. As Crowe and Pala were engaged in normal conversation, Pala turned his back on Crowe and Crowe shot him. When Pala tried to escape, Crowe shot at him again, missing, and then hit Pala over the head with a paint can, and poured paint over his face. Crowe then beat Pala’s skull in with a crow bar and stole $1,160.00. Crowe claimed he had planned on robbing the store to get money to pay off his debts.

Today in a plea for commutation, before the 5-member Parole Board, Crowe’s attorney, Ann Fort, blamed severe withdrawal for her client’s actions on the night of the murder. She said that her client had recently stopped using cocaine. Since being rehabilitated, she claims Crowe has constantly tried to atone for the brutal murder.

Fort provided a box of letters from supporters, including a testimonial from a former corrections officer, Jack Bedsole who called Crowe, “a peacemaker” among the inmates in the prison.

In his letter, Bedsole wrote, “He was the only person I dealt with on death row in 16 years who I felt like if they released him that morning he would never get in any more trouble and he could make a contribution to society.”

Crowe wrote a letter of remorse to be read at the hearing, “What I did to Joseph Pala is not something that I have ever been able to forget, or push back into the recesses of my mind,” Crowe said.

This is the second clemency hearing heard in Georgia this month. The first, William Earl Lynd, was denied clemency and was executed by lethal injection on May 6, 2008, at 7:00 p.m. William Earl Lynd was the first inmate executed nationwide since September, when a de facto moratorium was put in place until the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal injection.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS