The state plans to execute an Athens-area man later this month for murdering a follower of his small white supremacist group more than a decade ago.
William Mark Mize will be put to death by lethal injection at 7 p.m. April 28 unless state officials agree to commute his sentence or pardon him. He would be the second person executed this year in Georgia.
The state Department of Corrections scheduled Mize's death Monday, shortly after an Oconee County Superior Court judge ordered that the execution happen between April 28 and May 5.
Mize, 52, has been on Georgia's death row in Jackson since 1995, when an Oconee County jury convicted him in the shooting death of Eddie Tucker of Hull.
A former Ku Klux Klan member, Mize led a small Klan-like group called the National Vastilian Aryan Party.
He shot Tucker with a shotgun, execution-style, in October 1994 after Tucker didn't carry out an order to burn down a crack house in Athens, state prosecutors said.
Before Mize is executed, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles will conduct a clemency hearing.
The board will meet with his Macon attorney, Franklin J. Hogue, on Thursday and with Mize next week, Hogue said.
Hogue, who was appointed to the case by a federal judge in 2001, said Monday he hadn't spoken with his client about the scheduled execution but assumed Mize was aware of the date.
Mize has appealed his conviction several times to state and federal courts, unsuccessfully. Most recently, the U.S. Supreme Court refused on March 23 to review the case.
"He's consistently maintained his innocence from the day of his arrest to this minute," Hogue said.
Three other Mize followers were arrested and charged with murdering Tucker in a wooded area of Oconee County in October 1994.
Two of them, Christopher Hattrup and Terry Mark Allen, were convicted and now are serving life sentences in prison. Prosecutors dropped charges against Mize's girlfriend, Samantha Doster, who testified against Mize during his trial.
According to court records, Mize and several NVAP members gathered at Mize's home on Oct. 15, 1994, and they later left to go camping. On the way, Mize told the group there was a crack house in Athens that he wanted "gotten rid of."
Hattrup and Tucker were supposed to set the house on fire but didn't, and Hattrup later told Mize they "didn't need anybody around that couldn't follow orders," referring to Tucker.
The group stayed at a bar until it was dark, then drove to the Oconee County woods and walked in without a flashlight. Tucker, Hattrup and Mize got ahead of the rest of the group, who testified they heard a shot and Tucker say, "My God, what did you do that for?"
After a second shot, Doster heard Hattrup ask Mize if he had the gun and Mize replied, "No, man. I thought you had it."
"No. He took it away from me," Hattrup said, and then Mize said, "If you can't finish it, I can."
Allen then moved up the trail and talked with Mize and Hattrup about muscle spasms and how Tucker was still moving. Then there was a third shot.
Back at the car, Mize came out of the woods holding the shotgun, then asked the others "if they knew why it was done," according to court records. Everyone nodded agreement, and Mize said the same thing could happen to them if they ran their mouths.
Doster testified later that Mize confided in her that he had finished Tucker off by shooting him in the head.
But Doster since has recanted her testimony, and Mize has tried to assert his innocence, claiming Hattrup did all the shooting.
Since his conviction, Hattrup also has made sworn statements that he alone killed Tucker after the two got in a drunken argument and that Mize didn't order the killing.
Last year, however, the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals found Hattrup's statements "wholly unconvincing," in part because he contradicted himself about who fired which shots at Tucker.
"This internal contradiction on a crucial point suggests that, at best, Hattrup has an incomplete memory of the incident (perhaps because of his admitted drunkenness), and at worst is lying in order to help his friend Mize," the court said.
