Lawyers for a man set to be put to death next week in Georgia argue that an agreement entered into by the state and death penalty defense attorneys during the COVID-19 pandemic should shield their client from execution for the time being. A federal judge is set to hear arguments on Dec. 9 in a lawsuit filed by lawyers for Stacey Humphreys, who is scheduled to die on Dec. 17. Humphreys, 52, was convicted of malice murder in the 2003 killings of 33-year-old Cyndi Williams and 21-year-old Lori Brown at the real estate office where they worked in a suburb of Atlanta. After Georgia put executions on hold during the pandemic, the state attorney general's office entered into an agreement with lawyers for people on death row to set the terms under which they could resume. The state Supreme Court has affirmed that the agreement is a binding contract. The text of the agreement says it applies only to people on death row whose requests to have their appeals reheard were denied by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals while a pandemic-related judicial emergency was in place. The judicial emergency was lifted in June 2021 and the appeals court rejected Humphreys' request in October 2024. Lawyers for the state argue that Humphreys is, therefore, not covered by the agreement and his execution should be allowed to proceed. The agreement includes three conditions that must be met before executions could be scheduled for the covered prisoners: the expiration of the state’s COVID-19 judicial emergency, the resumption of normal visitation at state prisons and the availability of a COVID-19 vaccine “to all members of the public.” Additionally, state lawyers agreed that once those conditions were met, they would provide three months' notice before pursuing an execution warrant for one of the prisoners covered by the agreement and six months’ notice for the rest. Although the judicial emergency was lifted more than four years ago, defense attorneys say the other two conditions have not been met because visitation is “severely restricted” compared with its pre-pandemic levels and infants under 6 months old are not eligible for the vaccine. A judge ruled earlier this year that the vaccine condition hasn't yet been met, and the state's appeal of that ruling is pending before the Georgia Supreme Court. The judge plans to handle the visitation issue separately. Humphreys' lawyers wrote in a lawsuit filed in October that the agreement's clear purpose was to allow lawyers for people on death row to adequately prepare for clemency proceedings and for the "frantic time period immediately leading up to execution proceedings." They argue that seeking to execute people who weren't included while the agreement remains in effect creates “a distinct, disfavored class” of death row prisoners who won't be guaranteed he same level of legal representation in violation of their constitutional rights to equal protection and due process. “What matters is that the harms the Agreement's conditions were designed to protect against still exist today for all death row prisoners,” Humphreys' lawyers wrote. Lawyers for the state dispute that Humphreys' due process and equal protection rights would be violated, arguing that he has failed to show how his lawyers have been restricted from preparing for his upcoming execution because of COVID-19 or that the state has arbitrarily chosen to exclude him from the agreement. The state's lawyers also point out that death row prisoner Willie James Pye made similar arguments before his execution in March 2024 and a federal judge found that “the State clearly has a valid basis for drawing a line between the inmates covered and not covered by the Agreement.” A similar case brought by three other people on Georgia's death row was rejected by a federal judge and is pending before the 11th Circuit.

The former court clerk in South Carolina who helped out with the murder trial of attorney Alex Murdaugh pleaded guilty Monday to criminal charges for showing sealed court exhibits to a photographer and lying about it in court. Former Colleton County Clerk of Court Mary Rebecca “Becky” Hill pleaded guilty in Colleton County Circuit Court to four charges — obstruction of justice and perjury for showing a reporter photographs that were sealed court exhibits and then lying about it — as well as two counts of misconduct in office for taking bonuses and promoting through her public office a book she wrote on the trial. Judge Heath Taylor sentenced Hill to three years of probation. The judge told Hill her sentence would have been much harsher if prosecutors had found that she had tampered with the Murdaugh jury. Hill apologizes for her crimes Hill read a short statement where she asked the judge for a chance to do better. "There is no excuse for the mistakes I made. I’m ashamed of them and will carry that shame the rest of my life,” she said. Hill was in charge of taking care of the jury, overseeing exhibits and helping the judge during Murdaugh's six-week trial that ended with murder convictions for killing his wife and son. The case involved power, danger, money and privilege and an attorney whose family had lorded over his small South Carolina county for nearly a century. Hill has played a prominent part as Murdaugh appeals his convictions and a sentence of life without parole. His lawyers said Hill tried to influence jurors to vote guilty and that she was biased against Murdaugh for her book. Prosecutors investigated jury tampering allegations Prosecutors said they investigated jury tampering allegations. But while three jurors or alternates said Hill told stories that changed about how she may have tried to influence them, 11 said she did nothing wrong. “I would be facing a trial with 11 witnesses coming in to say everything the state is saying is not true,” Solicitor Rick Hubbard said. During Monday's hearing, Hubbard told the judge that a journalist told investigators that Hill showed graphic crime scene photos to several media members. He did not name the journalist. The photos were posted online and Hubbard said metadata from the images matched up with a time where Hill's courthouse key card said she was inside the locked room where the photos were kept. Murdaugh is also serving a separate sentence of decades in prison for admitting to stealing millions of dollars from settlements for clients who suffered horrible injuries or deaths — and from his family’s law firm. An initial appeal by Murdaugh’s lawyers was denied. But Judge Jean Toal said she wasn’t sure Hill told the truth about her dealings with jurors and was “attracted by the siren call of celebrity” status. Along with showing the sealed exhibits, an arrest warrant said Hill lied to Toal during a January 2024 hearing when the judge asked: “Did you allow anyone from the press to view the sealed exhibits?” Hill admitted taking money from her office One of the charges — misconduct in office — involved money that investigators said Hill took for herself. She brought a check to court on Monday to pay back nearly $10,000 meant for bonuses from federal money meant to improve child support collection and about $2,000 in money from the Clerk of Court’s office. The warrant on the other misconduct charge said Hill used her public role as clerk of court to promote her book on the Murdaugh trial on social media. The judge said he knows Hill has been more humiliated than most people who come before him because of all the attention from the true crime world on the Murdaugh case. “ A lot of boats got swept up in the hoopla that was at that trial,” Taylor said. “A lot of folks probably made a lot of money, but you didn’t.” Hill was also accused last May of 76 counts of ethics violations. Officials said Hill allowed a photo of Murdaugh in a holding cell to be taken to promote her book on the trial and used county money to buy dozens of lunches for her staff, prosecutors and a vendor. Hill also struck a deal with a documentary maker to use the county courtroom in exchange for promoting her book on the trial, which later she admitted had plagiarized passages, according to the South Carolina Ethics Commission complaint. Hill resigned in March 2024 during the last year of her four-year term, citing the public scrutiny of Murdaugh’s trial and wanting to spend time with her grandchildren.

A federal judge in Florida on Friday ordered the release of grand jury transcripts from the federal sex trafficking cases of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith said a recently passed federal law ordering the release of records related to the cases overrode a federal rule prohibiting the release of matters before a grand jury. The law signed last month by President Donald Trump compels the Justice Department, FBI and federal prosecutors to release later this month the vast troves of material they have amassed during investigations into Epstein. When the documents will be released is unknown. The government had asked the court for permission to include the usually secret grand jury records in the files they are required to make public under the new federal law, known as the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The Justice Department hasn’t set a timetable for when it plans to start releasing information, but the law set a deadline of Dec. 19. However, the law also allows the Justice Department to withhold files that it says could jeopardize an active federal investigation. That’s also longstanding Justice Department policy. Files can also be withheld if they’re found to be classified or if they pertain to national defense or foreign policy. One of the federal prosecutors on the Florida case did not answer a phone call Friday and the other declined to answer questions. The Justice Department had requested the unsealing of documents from three Epstein-related separate cases: the 2006-2007 Florida grand jury investigation into Epstein, his 2019 sex trafficking case in New York and Ghislaine Maxwell’s 2021 sex trafficking case, also in New York. The Florida request was approved Friday. The New York requests are pending, with the Justice Department facing a Monday deadline to make its final filing — a response to submissions by victims, Epstein’s estate and Maxwell’s lawyers. The judges in those matters have said they plan to rule expeditiously.