Georgia Supreme Court removes obstacle for death row executions delayed by COVID pandemic

A new opinion by the Georgia Supreme Court rules that a vaccine condition made during the COVID-19 pandemic concerning a handful of the state’s death row prisoners can no longer be used to delay their execution.

In early 2021, a committee of a judicial task force on COVID instructed lawyers for death row prisoners and the state attorney general’s office to determine the terms under which executions could resume. After negotiations, they entered into the agreement in April 2021.

Executions would not restart until six months after three conditions had been met, according to the agreement: the expiration of the state’s COVID-19 judicial emergency, the resumption of normal visitation at state prisons, and the availability of a COVID vaccine “to all members of the public.” It also set minimum intervals for the spacing of executions once they resumed.

Lawyers for the Federal Defender Program, a nonprofit representing death row inmates in state clemency proceedings, have argued that the third condition has still not been met, arguing that it isn’t yet available to infants under 6 months old, and visitations to state prisons have not returned to normal.

While a Fulton County judge ruled in 2025 that the agreement continued to block the executions, Tuesday’s opinion from the state’s highest court finds that the vaccine condition has been met.

“A review of the record reveals nothing that legally prohibits children of any age from receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, if requested by a parent and deemed medically appropriate,” Justice Carla Wong McMillian wrote. “Most vaccines—like COVID-19 vaccines—are not generally recommended for children under six months old, which could impact whether a parent chooses to request a COVID-19 vaccine for her child or whether a provider would agree in the exercise of her medical judgment to administer the vaccine, but that does not mean that the vaccine is not available or obtainable.”

This undated photo shows the death chamber at the Georgia Diagnostic Prison in Jackson, GeorgiaGeorgia Department of Corrections / Getty Images / Erik S. Lesser
The justice did not rule on the issue related to prison visitation, saying in a footnote that it “has not yet been litigated.”

This agreement only applied to people on death row whose requests to have their appeals reheard were denied by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals while the pandemic-era judicial emergency was in place. It covers fewer than 10 of the 33 inmates currently on Georgia’s death row.

From 2010 to 2010 to 2020, the state executed 30 people, including nine in 2016 and five in 2015. Since then, it has only executed one: 59-year-old Willie James Pye.