Linda Tucker, the mother of Nikia Gilbreath, poses at her home in Rocky Face, Ga., holding a piece of pottery made by her daughter. Gilbreath was 23 years old when Jamie Ray Ward kidnapped and murdered her, and he was convicted in 1991.
Nikia Kay GilbreathLaFAYETTE, Ga. — More than a quarter-century after a local man kidnapped a pregnant woman, broke her ribs, stuffed wads of paper down her throat, suffocated her and dumped her body in the woods, his lawyer is coming back to court for a procedural step in a case that seems to never end.
To be clear, Jamie Ray Ward’s guilt is not in doubt. A jury convicted him of murder and feticide in 1991. But his punishment is still uncertain.
The jury gave Ward the death penalty. A federal court of appeals overturned that punishment in 2010 and sent the case back to Walker County for a new sentencing hearing. And the case has sat there ever since, while the family of Ward’s 23-year-old victim, Nikia Kay Gilbreath, waits for his case to conclude.
On Dec. 1, Superior Court Judge Jon “Bo” Wood set a date for a new motions hearing in Ward’s case. Attorneys for the defense and state will come together on Jan. 7. Ward’s lawyer, Jerry Word, could not be reached for comment this week, and Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney Herbert “Buzz” Franklin did not respond to an email seeking comment.
That motions hearing is supposed to move the case closer to the actual resentencing, which would conclude Ward’s case more than two decades after the original killing.