GREG BLUESTEIN
Associated Press Writer
ATLANTA - An attorney for the Georgia man who is set to be executed this week after he was convicted of the 1986 killings of his ex-girlfriend and her 11-year-old niece is preparing to petition Georgia's top court for a last-minute reprieve.
Melbert Ray Ford's attorney is preparing to file an appeal that claims his death penalty is disproportionate and that it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment because he's sat on death row for more than two decades.
A lower judge on Tuesday denied a similar appeal from Ford, who is scheduled to be put to death at 7 p.m. Wednesday. Ford's attorney Brian Mendelsohn said he was "disappointed" by the decision and preparing to appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court and beyond.
Ford was convicted of killing Martha Chapman Matich and her niece Lisa Chapman in what prosecutors say was a revenge killing. They say Ford began harassing her with phone calls after the couple broke up, and that soon he was telling friends he wanted to kill her.
Ford, 48, was initially set to be executed on Feb. 23 but it was delayed because the pardons board did not have five members. The execution was rescheduled for Wednesday after Gov. Sonny Perdue appointed a fifth member last month.
According to court records, this is how the killings unfolded:
Enraged at his ex-girlfriend, Ford sought to enlist several friends in a plot to drive him to the Newton County convenience store where she worked so he could rob the place and then attack her.
Each effort failed until he met Roger Turner, a 19-year-old who was out of a job and nearly penniless. Ford plied Turner with alcohol and the promise of thousands of dollars in cash, eventually persuading him to join the plot.
The two drove in Turner's car to Chapman's Grocery shortly after it closed on March 6, 1986. Ford leapt out, shot away the lower half of the locked door and entered the store while Turner waited in the car. Turner later said he heard only screams and gunshots while waiting for Ford, who would soon emerge with a bag of money, according to court records.
When authorities arrived, they found Matich lying dead behind the counter, shot three times. Chapman was discovered sitting on a bucket in a bathroom, shot in the head and having convulsions. She died shortly after.
The two men were arrested the next day, and Turner confessed to authorities. Ford, meanwhile, told investigators the shooting began after Matich pushed the alarm button, and that if he had worn a mask it would not have happened.
A Newton County jury convicted Ford and sentenced him to death after an October 1986 trial in which he claimed he was too drunk to know what was happening, and that Turner was the one who entered the store and started firing.
In several appeals, Ford argued that the jury failed to find any aggravating circumstances that would have justified a capital sentence. He also contended that prosecutors suppressed evidence about Turner's drug use the night of the killings and claimed his trial lawyer was ineffective.
State and federal appeals courts, however, have repeatedly denied his claims and upheld the death sentence. A petition to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied on Jan. 25, and the Georgia pardons board denied his appeal for clemency on Friday.
Death penalty opponents plan vigils across the state on Wednesday for Ford to urge the courts to commute his sentence so he will spend the life in prison. Sara Totonchi, who chairs Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said that his record shows he would pose no dangers to any staff or fellow inmates if an execution was halted.
"We take a public stand against the state killing in our name, reject this futile and brutalizing exercise in vengeance that makes our communities neither safer nor more whole, and register sadness and outrage at Georgia's terrible distinction of being at the forefront in the nation for carrying out death sentences," she said.