One of Augusta’s two death-row inmates is appealing his sentence based on juror strikes the American Civil Liberties Union said were grounded solely on race.
Adrian Hargrove, 46, was convicted in 2014 of murder, kidnapping and feticide in the 2008 Hephzibah-area stabbing deaths of Allyson Pederson, 18, her mother and stepfather Sharon and Andrew Hartley, and her unborn child.
Prosecutors said on Feb. 9, 2008, after a night of drinking and doing cocaine with his wife, Hargrove lured Pederson, who was a friend’s girlfriend, out of her Bannock Mill Road residence.
At an abandoned Horseshoe Road trailer, Hargrove stabbed Pederson to death, then set her body on fire at the New Savannah Bluff Lock and Dam. He returned to the family’s home and stabbed Sharon Hartley and stabbed and beat Andrew Hartley to their deaths.
After delays, motions hearings, a mental and intellectual evaluation and a jury trial on Hargrove’s competency to stand trial, jury selection in the murder case began in February 2014. A Richmond County jury took little time to find Hargrove guilty on all counts, and sentenced him to death by legal injection.
Superior Court Judge James G. Blanchard set Hargrove’s execution date for May 19, 2014.
Nine years on death row
Several years went by with Hargrove on death row at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison near Jackson, but in 2018, his attorneys with the Georgia Capital Defender filed a motion for a new trial.
Among trial errors they cited was the presentation of evidence Hargrove as a teen had sexually abused a four-year-old, giving the child gonorrhea. The attorneys claimed the evidence, which led only to Hargrove’s conviction for child cruelty, should not have been presented to the jury in the sentencing phase.
They also cited numerous errors that took place during jury selection, including the court’s failure to investigate juror misconduct, and the matter of the jury strikes.
By using all but one peremptory strike to eliminate 13 prospective Black jurors, the motion stated, prosecutors secured a jury without a single Black male, they said.
In its Oct. 31 friend-of-the-court brief, the ACLU notes it writes in support not only of Hargrove, but of all improperly excluded jurors.
Since 1986, the court has used a test from Batson v. Kentucky to determine whether peremptory challenges violate the Equal Protection Clause. Some states have eliminated peremptory strikes altogether.
The test requires the striking party to provide a race-neutral reason for excluding a juror, which the judge must determine is an actual reason, and not mere “pretext” for underlying discrimination.
Commissioner among those struck
An Augusta public official found himself unwittingly a centerpiece of the appeal. Former Commissioner Dennis Williams, a “model” juror with a career in veteran and public service, was struck after being called to serve on the Hargrove jury, it said.
Reached Friday, Williams said he’d thought little about the case since being struck nine years ago, but was relieved at the time jury service wouldn’t interfere with his first campaign for commission.
“I wouldn’t have had a problem sitting on that jury,” he said. “The only negative thing was the campaign.”
During questioning, Williams detailed his involvement with various civic groups, including the Augusta NAACP, for which he’d served as president, and said he was open to imposing the death penalty if warranted. But when then-District Attorney Ashley Wright gave a reason for the strike, she cited the NAACP’s public position on capital punishment, something Williams wasn’t questioned about.
Courts haven’t found NAACP membership to be a race-neutral explanation, the ACLU argued. “Based on the discriminator removal of this juror alone, the court should find a Batson violation and order a new trial,” it said.
The brief details the explanations given for the removal of several of the other 13 jurors who were removed and contends discrepancies existed in the court’s treatment of Black and white jurors. A Black nurse was characterized as overly agreeable to male superiors, while a white nurse was not. A Black woman whose husband had PTSD and schizophrenia was viewed as overly sympathetic, while a white woman with a sick husband and a white man with PTSD were not, it said.
Appeal cites history of racism
A community’s history of the racial exclusion figures into a successful challenge. In a supplemental briefing, the defense touts the racism that “has long infected the political and criminal justice systems in the Augusta Circuit,” starting with voting rights.
After the 1952 election of W.C. Ervin, the first Black trustee of the Richmond County Board of Education, Augusta legislators changed the voting system from wards to at-large, which remained in effect until 1988.
Voters didn’t elect Black candidates again till the late 1960s, after passage of the Voting Rights Act, but legislators in 1971 would propose consolidating Augusta and Richmond County, a “blatant voter dilution tactic,” the briefing states. After Augusta elected its first Black mayor in 1981, consolidation proponents would propose abolishing the office of mayor.
Resistance to integrate Richmond County schools would leave the system still under a desegregation order in 2008 and discrimination in the Augusta Police Department would culminate in the Augusta Riot, it said.
As a lawyer representing criminal defendants, John H. Ruffin Jr. would challenge race-based peremptory jury strikes before his appointments as Augusta’s first Black superior court judge and one of only four in its history.
The ACLU brief calls for a new trial based on that history of discrimination coupled with prosecutors’ use of 13 of 14 strikes to remove Black jurors. Or in the alternative, it asks the court to grant Hargrove a full evidentiary hearing in which to present Augusta’s history of racial discrimination.
Hearing set for January
Blanchard, now chief Columbia County Superior Court judge, opted to remain on the case after Columbia County split from the Augusta Judicial Circuit. He recently granted a defense motion to unseal juror questionnaires in Hargrove and four other cases, to reveal race information about each prospective juror.
Last week, Blanchard set aside a three-week period in January for a full hearing on evidence in the Batson and other claims.
