Court Opinion

ID: 9597490
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:59:15.889196+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:27:16.024156
License: Public Domain

Hill, Justice,
concurring specially.
In its brief in opposition to motion for rehearing, the state reminds us of the early 1960’s: "More than two decades ago another fifteen-year-old, Preston Cobb, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to die in the electric chair. See Cobb v. State, 218 Ga. 10, 22 (126 SE2d 231) (1962). Whether or not motivated by the Cobb case, the following year the General Assembly drew the line on executing youthful defendants; the line was drawn at seventeen years of age. Ga. L. 1963, pp. 122-123.”
Yet the state goes on to contend that that part of the 1963 law applicable here (section 1) was repealed and that the other part (section 2) is not applicable here, so the state contends, or has been secretly repealed.
The state argues that "Succinctly stated, Georgia law no longer precludes the execution of youthful defendants...” down to and including age 13.1 shudder at the cruelty of my government.