Larry Thompson (from left), Leah Ward Sears and Bob Barr
High-profile Georgia lawyers have thrown their weight behind an effort to overturn a decades-old conviction based on the recent discovery that prosecutors in a 1977 murder case allegedly kept African-Americans off the jury and kept track of them by noting the letter “N” beside their names.
An all-white jury convicted Johnny Gates, a black man, of the rape and murder of a white woman and sentenced him to death. After 26 years on death row, he was re-sentenced to life without parole following a remand on an intellectual disability issue.
