(SRN NEWS/AP) – The fact that the COVID-19 vaccine is not available for newborn babies is shielding a group of prisoners on Georgia’s death row from execution.
Executions in Georgia were halted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the state attorney general’s office entered into an agreement with lawyers for people on death row to set the terms under which they could resume for a specific group of prisoners. At least one of those conditions, having to do with the availability of the COVID-19 vaccine, has not been met, and seeking an execution date for a prisoner covered by the agreement would breach the agreement, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Shukura Ingram (pictured) ruled.
The agreement includes three conditions that had to be met before executions could be set for the affected prisoners: the expiration of the state’s COVID-19 judicial emergency, the resumption of normal visitation at state prisons and the availability of a COVID-19 vaccine “to all members of the public.” Once those conditions were met, the state agreed to give three months’ notice before pursuing an execution warrant for one of the prisoners covered by the agreement and six months’ notice for the rest.
The state has argued that the agreement should no longer apply, contending the conditions have been met. But defense attorneys say it’s still valid because the vaccine isn’t yet available to infants under 6 months old, and visitation at state prisons has not returned to normal.
Ingram’s ruling, issued Friday, addressed only the vaccination question. She plans to handle the visitation issue separately.
Ingram wrote that the state’s arguments “all boil down to an attempt to rewrite the Agreement.” The state is “(u)nhappy with the language it drafted” and wants to change it so that the condition would be satisfied once vaccines are available to “most members of the public.”
“But courts cannot rewrite contracts to relieve a party of their regrets,” she wrote. She ruled that the agreement is “binding and enforceable,” that the vaccination condition hasn’t been met and that seeking an execution warrant before the requirements have been met would breach the agreement.
The state attorney general’s office plans to appeal, a spokesperson said Tuesday.