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2017 Legislative Session

Rethinking Georgia’s death penalty

A group of Georgia conservatives are calling for a “re-think” of the death penalty. At this point, however, they don’t have plans to call to end it. In 2016, the amount of people put to death was the lowest it’s been in 25 years in the U.S., but Georgia and Texas accounted for 80 percent of the nation’s deaths, with Georgia executing more prisoners than any other state. Rep. Brett Harrell (R-Snellville), a member of

Race & Racism

30 years later, racist death penalty case gets new hearing

A black Georgia man was sentenced to death by an all-white jury in 1987. Nearly thirty years later, the U.S. Supreme Court begins to unravel the racist jury selection that put this black man, Timothy Foster, on death row as a teenager. Just this week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 7-1 decision in Foster v. Chatman that racial discrimination drove the selection of an all-white jury, in violation of the law. Through an open