Georgia Parole Board to consider reducing death penalty for man set to be executed this month

Mary Royse Ginther
·1 min read
11

The State Board of Pardons and Paroles will hold a clemency meeting for a man who will be executed this month.

Officials said the State Board of Pardons and Paroles will meet on March 19 to hear testimony for or against clemency for Willie James Pye, a man convicted of brutally murdering his ex-girlfriend.

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Pye’s execution is scheduled for March 20 at 7 p.m. at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.

If granted clemency, Pye’s sentence would be reduced from the death sentence to a life sentence with or without the possibility of parole. Only the Parole Board can grant executive clemency to a condemned inmate in Georgia.

Pye was convicted of malice murder, kidnapping with bodily injury, armed robbery, burglary and rape in the 1992 murder of his ex-girlfriend, Alicia Lynn Yarbrough. He was given the death penalty for malice murder in 1996.

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Since being convicted, Pye has tried multiple times to appeal his conviction, however the Georgia Supreme Court denied each appeal.

This will be the first execution the state of Georgia has performed since Jan. 2020, when Donnie Lance was put to death by lethal injection for the 1997 murders of his ex-wife and her boyfriend in Jackson County.

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