Inmate’s lawyers turn to courts in effort to halt execution
ATLANTA — A Georgia prisoner who was recently diagnosed with autism should not be put to death, his lawyers argue in court briefs, saying his scheduled execution this week would be unconstitutional.
Gregory Paul Lawler, 63, is scheduled to die Wednesday by injection of the barbiturate pentobarbital at the state prison in Jackson. He was convicted of murder in the October 1997 shooting death of Atlanta police Officer John Sowa and also critically injured Officer Patricia Cocciolone.
Lawler’s attorneys on Monday asked a judge in Fulton County Superior Court, where he was originally convicted, to halt his execution and grant an emergency request for a new trial. They said the court cannot be confident Lawler would receive a death sentence if jurors were aware that he suffered from autism spectrum disorder.
In a separate court filing in Butts County, where Georgia’s death row is located, his lawyers challenged the constitutionality of executing him. The death penalty “no longer comports with the evolving standards of decency in this State or in the country at large,” his lawyers argued. They added that Lawler is ineligible for execution because his autism spectrum disorder “leaves him with diminished capacities that reduce his culpability in a manner akin to intellectually disabled and juvenile offenders” whose execution is barred by law.