Attorneys representing a Georgia prisoner set to be put to death next week for the 1976 murder of an 8-year-old Cobb County girl filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to delay the execution.
Virgil Delano Presnell Jr, who killed the young girl 46 years ago, is scheduled to die by lethal injection May 17 at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.
But in an emergency motion filed Monday, attorneys from three Atlanta law firms said the state’s decision to execute Presnell violates a written agreement with the state Attorney General’s Office. Put in place last year, it postponed most Georgia executions until after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The suit was filed on behalf of lawyers at the federal public defender’s office in Atlanta, who will represent Presnell during his clemency petition before the state Board of Pardons and Paroles.
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