Board Rejects Appeal To Spare Alday Killer Carl Issacs

Atlanta Journal & Constitution ^ | 05/02/03 | AP, Bill Montgomery

[kcordell]

Board rejects appeal to spare Alday killer Carl Isaacs

The Associated Press

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied an appeal Friday to commute the decades-old death sentence of Carl Isaacs, the nation's longest-serving death row inmate.

Isaacs, 49, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection Tuesday for orchestrating the slaughter of six members of the Alday family in their home during a burglary in 1973.

There were no extraordinary circumstances that would have justified commuting Isaacs' sentence, said Heather Hedrick, spokeswoman for the board.

"Carl Isaacs needs to be executed," said Susan Chambliss, whose grandfather Ned Alday was killed when she was 8 years old. "Nothing should stand in the way of this happening. We've waited 30 years for this."

A lawyer had argued that Isaacs should not be executed because he was abused as a child, he has cancer and is a changed man.

"As are all of us, he is far from perfect, but he is not the devil," attorney Jack Martin wrote the board. Isaacs is "not the same hotheaded person he was when he was 19."

The five-member board held a private hearing to consider Isaacs' request. They later met with the victims' family.

The Aldays, a family of farmers in rural southwest Georgia, were shot to death as they arrived home for lunch at their trailer. Ned Alday was gunned down along with three sons, a brother and a daughter-in-law, who was also raped before being killed. Prosecutors called the slayings the most gruesome murders in the state's history.

"He's not even a human being," said Paige Seagraves, another of Ned Alday's granddaughters. "If I had something to say to him, it would be 'May God have mercy on your soul because you had no mercy on my family."'

Three other men also were convicted in the murders. Two are serving life sentences; the third was released from prison in 1993.

In his application for clemency, Martin contends that Isaacs is not the same man today as the 19-year-old killer. Martin's petition described Isaacs as the product of an abusive, neglected childhood who was gang raped by other inmates in a riot at the Maryland State Prison less than two months before the Alday murders.

"The Carl Isaacs who is about to be executed is "obviously not the same damaged, out of control youth who committed awful crimes at the age of 19.

"He is older, wiser, worn down by 30 years of harsh imprisonment, and is no longer a threat to anyone," Martin's appeal for clemency stated.

"He has been diagnosed with cancer and his bladder has been removed. He has to wear a colostomy bag," Martin added.

Isaacs' illness is not by itself a reason for clemency, the attorney argues, but "there is a something unsettling and unseemly about executing a man who may well be terminally ill."

Martin's petition also argues that it is "fundamentally unfair...to single out one offender for a death sentence while others who are equally or more culpable for the same crime are sentenced to life."

Isaacs, Coleman and Dungee initially were convicted and sentenced to death in brief separate trials in January 1974 by Seminole County Superior Court juries, largely on the eyewitness testimony of Carl Isaacs' 15-year-old brother, Billy.

Their convictions and death sentences were overturned in 1985 by a federal appellate court and the were granted new trials. The court said pretrial publicity prejudiced the Seminole jurors and that the trials should have been held in another jurisdiction.

Isaacs, who prosecutors contend has boasted of being the ringleader, was convicted and sentenced again to death in a 1988 retrial in Houston County.

Coleman was convicted the same year by a DeKalb County jury and was sentenced to life without parole. Dungee, who is borderline mentally retarded, later entered a guilty pleas to six counts of murder and was sentences to life in prison.

-- Staff writer Bill Montgomery contributed to this story.

[CFW]

Hopefully he will be out of here today (7:00 p.m. is the scheduled time). Approx. 60 members of the Alday family are planning to attend the "ceremony".

[MeekOneGOP]

That's about the same time they should roll this one out too (6 CDT).

bttt . . .

[MeekOneGOP]

Whoops ! I meant the one in Texas that's being executed tonight.

I thought I was on that thread . . .

[CFW]

Well, hopefully they will both be referred to in the past tense by 8:00 p.m.(est).

[EllaMinnow]

The family deserves justice.

[CFW]

Mary Alday (Jerry's wife) was next. When she came to the trailer, she was raped on a kitchen table by Carl Isaacs and Coleman, court documents stated. Mary Alday was later taken to a wooded area several miles away from the trial, raped by Dungee and then shot and killed, court records stated.

Everytime I read the above, I am flabbergasted as to how anyone could waste their time defending "poor, deprived, Carl Isaacs."

[MeekOneGOP]

After 30 years, I would hope they wouldn't delay this case any longer. Hard to believe it's been dragged out that long.

I didn't see any obstacles to delay the Texas date with justice for tonight.

Bu-bye, bad guys !

[EllaMinnow]

One of the details that has always stuck in my head is that Mary Alday was raped, then shot and left to die, on top of a hill of fire ants.

The world will be a better place with at least one of these pigs gone.

[au eagle]

Billy was 15 at the time of the murders. He turned state's evidence, served 20 years, released in 1993, thought to be married and living in Florida. Carl Isaacs was 19 and will be put to death tonight! Wayne Coleman, older half-brother to Billy and Carl was sentenced to death, on appeal was commuted to life w/o payroll. Dungee was also sentenced to die but his sentence was commuted to life. Several years after the convictions, Georgia passed a law that prevented mentally challenged persons from being executed. That was the basis for Dundee's appeal.

[au eagle]

From the Dothan(AL) Eagle
http://www.dothaneagle.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=DEA%2FMGArticle%2FDEA_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031769377243&path=!n

Town recalls grisly '73 murders
Residents ready to see justice served in case of convicted killer


By Jim Cook
Eagle Staff
Wednesday, April 23, 2003


DONALSONVILLE, GA. -- A community left hanging for almost three decades by the legal tap dance of a convicted killer trying to evade execution will soon close a tragic chapter of its history.

Carl Isaacs, 49, has been on death row since 1974. The U.S. Supreme Court denied his final appeal Monday. Isaacs, convicted as the ringleader of the massacre of the Alday family, is now scheduled to die by lethal injection on May 6.

The Gateway Restaurant on U.S. 84 serves as a gathering place for Donalsonville residents to swap the latest news. A table known as the "gossip table" lies in the restaurant's front left corner. Local residents sitting there Wednesday said it was high time justice was served.

"I knew every one of them (the Aldays) and they were good people who tended their own business," Don Crawford said. "For the judicial system to carry it out as far as they did -- something's wrong."

Roy Ray said, "Carl Isaacs got stabbed a couple of years ago in jail. They should have let him die then."

"This is coming about 29 years too late," Bob Ray said.

Isaacs, his stepbrother Wayne Coleman, and George Dungee were convicted in 1974 for the murder of the Aldays and sentenced to die. The three received retrials in another Georgia county in 1988. Isaacs was again sentenced to die, but Coleman and Dungee had their sentences reduced to life.

Isaacs appealed his sentence in 2001, claiming his rights were violated 32 times during the retrial. Isaacs' almost 30-year evasion of his date with death has long stuck in the craw of residents of this small farming community.

"It ain't nothing but a damn lawyer's scheme," Ray said from his chair at the Gateway.

Other Donalsonville residents also expressed their frustration with the lengthy appeals process Isaacs has gone through, but said they were relieved justice would soon be served.

"It's been long in coming, it's going to finally bring to close a wound that's needed closing for a long, long time," said Ashley Register, who sat on a jury that convicted Dungee in 1974. Register said the 1988 retrial angered local residents, who he said gave Isaacs and his gang a fair trial.

"There's always been a feeling that the murderers should finally get what's coming to them," Mayor David Fain said. "That's probably not very Christian-like but it's time to put this behind us."

The Isaacs gang gunned down Ned Alday along with three sons and a brother inside a family mobile home. A daughter-in-law was raped and killed by the gang.

Just about everyone in Donalsonville has some connection to the Aldays, and thus to the crime.

"There's 3,300 people in this town and 9,000 in the county," Kathy Fox, a distant Alday relative, said. "When you go downtown you pretty much know everybody."

Fox, who works as a secretary at Commerce State Bank, said she was just 18 when the killings happened. She said the tragedy changed the small farming community forever, as people who never worried about locking their doors learned the meaning of fear.

"I was in college in Dothan back then, driving back and forth every day, and my mother didn't want me to go to school," she said. "We didn't know where they (the Isaacs gang) were at. People didn't want to let their children out of the house.

J.C. Earnest, a brother-in-law of Ned Alday's said, "We just didn't think things like that could happen in Seminole County. Things like that happened in other states."

Fain said he hopes the execution of Isaacs next month will put some of the fear that has lingered since the killings to rest. He said he's tired of his community being known as the site of some of the most gruesome murders in state history.

"It's created a lot of anguish among people," he said. "People are ready to see an end to it."

Fox said it was a shame many of the people closest to the Aldays are not alive to see their loved ones' killer brought to justice. Many family members and friends of the slain family have died in the almost 30 years Isaacs has been on death row.

"You would like to know that they were going to finally be at peace in their hearts and minds," she said

[CFW]

MM. It has been done.

Carl Isaacs, who helped kill six members of a southwest Georgia farming family 30 years ago, was put to death tonight.

The 49-year-old Jackson died of a lethal injection at 8:07 p.m. at Jackson State Prison for orchestrating the Alday family killings at Seminole County home on May 14, 1973.

Appeals and a retrial kept Isaacs on death row longer than anyone else in the nation.

Defense attorney Jack Martin Martin said that Isaacs has apologized for his misdeeds. As of the "cruel and unusual claim," Martin said, "He's been boxed up in a little cage for 30 years, a place where every now and then they take on (inmate) off and kill him. It's a strange society."

Part of Isaacs' last hope was finding a long-lost recording of an invocation by a minister at the 1988 retrial.

Isaacs' unsuccessful state appeal, filed Monday in the Supreme Court of Georgia, claimed the judge presiding over the 1988 retrial erred when he did not tell defense attorneys that a prayer was not transcribed by the court reporter.

Martin said the minister "apparently instructed the jurors to follow 'God's will,' rather than their own individual ideas about what should be done." Martin said that "raises serious questions as to whether religious principles were improperly interjected into Petitioner's trial."

The appeal says the judge knew of this error and should have immediately informed attorneys, so that a media tape recording could have been used for the trial record.

Isaacs, and fellow prison escapees Wayne Coleman and George Dungee were sentenced to death in 1974 and again in 1988 of shooting to death six members of a Seminole County farm family in southwest Georgia after they interrupted a burglary.

The three men were granted new trials in 1985 when a federal appeals court ruled extensive pre-trial publicity prevented them from getting a fair trial. Isaacs was again sentenced to death, but a jury deadlocked on giving Coleman the death penalty. He was sentenced to life. Dungee later pleaded guilty but mentally retarded and was sentenced to life in prison.

[MeekOneGOP]

Thanks. bttt . . .

[razorbak]

There is no justification from the Bible for failing to execute those who commit 1st degree murder. The 6th Commandment literally reads, not "Thou shall not kill," but "Thou shall not murder [Hebrew]." [Ex.20:13] This is further amplified in Exodus 21:14 14 "But if a man come presumptuously upon his neighbour, to slay him with guile; thou shalt take him from mine altar, that he may die."

1Tim.:9 knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers,

Rom.1:31 'Moreover you shall take no ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death, but he shall surely be put to death.33 'So you shall not pollute the land where you are; for blood defiles the land, and no atonement can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it. 34 'Therefore do not defile the land which you inhabit, in the midst of which I dwell; for I the LORD dwell among the children of Israel.'"

26 For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. 27 Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, 30 backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; 32 who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.

Rev.21:8 But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

But the "second death" does not mean that they will be simply annihilated. Rev.20:10 and other such passages in Revelation indicate that the "second death" or Hell consists of being "tormented day and night forever and ever."

[MeekOneGOP]

bttt

[EllaMinnow]

I just found this, which I think has some great quotes from the family:

Alday relatives: Isaacs showed 'no remorse'
By Mike Donila
Telegraph Staff Writer

Faye Alday Barber waited patiently for her father's killer to apologize minutes before his Tuesday night execution, but he never did.

"He never said he was sorry - he had a cardboard heart and a silhouette soul," said Willie Barber, Faye Alday Barber's husband of more than 28 years. "He had no remorse."

Witnesses said Carl Isaacs, 49, did not struggle when he was tied to a medical gurney - he was even seen joking with the warden. Isaacs, who was convicted in the killing of six Alday family members, declined to make a final statement but did ask for a prayer. He made brief eye contact with witnesses.

A prison guard later told the family that Isaacs didn't appear worried until they strapped him down.

Barber, 54, of Bonaire, did not witness the execution but his wife did. Willie Barber spoke on behalf of the family Wednesday.

He said he and his wife had a restless night Tuesday and didn't sleep much. He said the family has decided not to give any more interviews with the media, adding that they want "all of this behind them."

Isaacs was executed by lethal injection about one week short of 30 years since six members of the Alday family were murdered on their Seminole County farm. Isaacs was tried in the killings, convicted and sentenced to death in 1974. In 1985, that conviction was overturned on appeal. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to death again in 1988 and, until Tuesday night, had been on death row longer than any other current inmate in the United States.

Faye Alday Barber, who was 18 when her father and two brothers were slain, declined to comment, saying she was too distraught, her husband said.

"Carl Isaacs was some kind of evil person," Willie Barber said. "The death penalty was strictly designed for the likes of him, but it took 30 years, so I believe the whole system has failed. Isaacs was a million-dollar corpse who cost the taxpayers $28,000 a year to keep on death row."

Barber, who works at Robins Air Force Base in the software engineering department, said it was an emotional night for him, his wife and the more than 60 members of the Alday family who waited inside and outside the state prison in Jackson, where Isaacs was put to death.

In addition to taking shots at the court system - "Those welfare defense lawyers can go out and get real jobs because they've milked this cow for so long," he said - Barber is bitter people would protest the death penalty.

"I believe in freedom of speech. That's fine, but those people out there protesting, I never see any of them at the Alday tombstone holding a candlelight vigil," he said.

Tuesday's execution marked the first time since Georgia reinstated the death penalty in 1973 that family members of the victims were allowed to witness an execution, a prison spokeswoman said. Three members of the Alday family, including Faye Alday Barber, witnessed the execution.

"When you say 30 years, that's over a quarter of a century, and the people chosen to represent the Aldays - those children and grandchildren - never really knew the Alday family," Willie Barber said. "My daughter never even met her grandfather, never got the opportunity to sit in his lap."

In 1973, Isaacs, his half brother, Wayne Coleman, and a third man, George Dungee, broke out of a Maryland prison. They picked up Isaacs' 15-year-old brother in Baltimore, then headed south, arriving in Seminole County on May 14.

After the men broke into a mobile home on the Alday farm, two members of the family came home. Both were killed and as more family members returned, they too, were shot to death. Killed that day were Mary Alday, 26; her husband, Jerry, 35; Faye Barber's father, Ned, 62; Ned's sons Chester, 32, and Jimmy, 25; and Ned's brother Aubrey, 57.

Isaacs' younger brother, Billy, testified against the other three men and served 20 years in prison. Coleman and Dungee are serving life sentences.


"A cardboard heart and a slhouette soul."

Perfect description.

[CFW]

Thanks for the article. That poor family.

[CFW]

Alday killings shadow granddaughter's life
Execution brings no closure

By Wayne Ford
wford@onlineathens.com

Paige Seagraves, granddaughter of Ned Alday, killed 30 years ago with five members of his family in south Georgia's Seminole County, talks about the effect the slayings have had on her life. Dot Paul/Staff Paige Seagraves' office is decorated in a country-western style that hints at her life on a Jackson County cattle farm, but it doesn't give a clue to the darkness that has shadowed her and her family for the past 30 years.

When Carl Isaacs was put to death by lethal injection Tuesday, it was a finality that Seagraves believes should have happened long ago.

''I don't think there will ever be closure on this case. This is something my grandchildren will talk about one day,'' said Seagraves, the granddaughter of Ned Alday, who was killed by Isaacs on May 14, 1973, along with three of his sons, his brother and his daughter-in-law. Isaacs had been the longest-serving death row inmate in the country.

Seagraves, a senior probation officer working in Athens, believes her decision to major in criminal justice at the University of Georgia was likely influenced by the case. ''I don't know if it was a conscious decision, but I've grown up in the courts (due to the case), so I've had an interest in the criminal justice system,'' she said.

Seagraves was born the year after the Aldays were murdered in a mobile home on the 525-acre farm owned by Ned Alday in south Georgia's Seminole County. Isaacs and two other men, all of whom had escaped a Maryland prison, were convicted in the murders, but their convictions were overturned in 1985. Isaacs was again sentenced to death in a retrial. The others, Wayne Coleman and George Dungee, are serving life sentences.

The case garnered national attention for its brutality and how the family was killed one after another other as they came in from the fields. The woman, Mary Alday, was raped repeatedly before she was killed.

''It's really strange to think that Carl Isaacs is gone because all my life, I've lived in the shadow of this case,'' she said.

Law enforcement personnel at the Alday trailer in Donalsonville after the murders on May 14, 1973. Carl Isaacs was put to death Tuesday by lethal injection for his role in the notorious slayings. Two others are serving life sentences.

On Tuesday night, she and about 60 members of the Alday family, most from Seminole County, went to the state prison in Jackson for the execution. Seagraves and her first cousin, Susan Chambliss, acted as the family spokeswomen for the waiting throng of reporters.

Seagraves' mother, Faye Barber, was one of four Alday family members allowed to view the execution, which was a reversal of policy for the prison system. At least since 1973, family members were not allowed to view executions.

''I think that after 30 years, that's the least the state could do for us. I think we were owed that,'' Seagraves said.

''I was worried my mom was going to break down. She's pretty quiet and never had much to say about it,'' Seagraves said'' Her mother was 18 at the time of the shootings, the youngest of the Alday children.

Seagraves talked to her mother following the execution. ''She said he looked around and then he just went to sleep. She said, 'I don't know what I expected, but it seemed he got off too easy.'

Seagraves said many in the family hoped that Isaacs would have made a final statement.

''But we knew he probably wouldn't,'' she said. ''We were hoping for an apology or some form of remorse, but it didn't happen.''

But Seagraves said she and others had waited a long time for Isaacs' execution. That's why so many family members traveled to Jackson.

''It was emotional at times, and people would break down and cry. It was a reunion, and it was kind of our day. It was what we had all been waiting for. But no one said the word justice. No one. No one in the family feels it was justice.''

''How can you have justice when the other two are still sitting in prison and it took 30 years to get here?'' she said.

Seagraves grew up in Warner Robins, but spent many holidays and summers at her grandmother's home in the Seminole County town of Donalsonville. She learned at an early age about the murders of her family.

''Everyone in the family was very open to the grandchildren about what happened,'' she said.

She particularly remembers the influence of her grandmother, who died in 1998.

''We were never allowed to say anything bad about Carl Isaacs. My grandmother was a very Christian woman, the matriarch of the family and she believed God would deal with them.''

''She was a very dignified person and she wanted a lot of dignity for the family and would not resort to name-calling,'' Seagraves said. ''She would say, 'One day it will happen, and it will happen in the Lord's time.'

Seagraves said the case has affected the way she views politics.

''I always look at a candidates' stand on victims' rights and crime control. That's something I always look at when I vote, and I vote in every election.''

Seagraves said she is upset with comments made by Isaacs' lawyer, Jack Martin, who told reporters afterward that ''we have become one with the killers and we are all the lesser for it.''

''I hope Jack Martin never learns the difference between a legal execution and having six members of his family murdered,'' she said.

Seagraves said the Alday murder case will have lasting effects.

''We lost our heritage, and Donalsonville, Georgia, lost its sense of security and the Alday family lost faith in the criminal justice system,'' she said.

In Seminole County, a cornfield now blankets the murder scene, the mobile home was moved to someplace in Florida and an imposing black-marble monument marks where the Aldays are buried at Spring Creek Baptist Church.

And the state's most notorious mass murder case has made an indelible mark on its living victims. ''It shaped who I am,'' Seagraves said.

[eyespysomething]

$28,000 a year to house/care for/feed this murderer.

That is more than I make a year.

I remember this when it happened. Shocking big news in Georgia. I was 6, almost 7, and it was my introduction to 'bad guys' in the world.

If it hadn't been storming this past Tuesday night, me and the Mr. and the 3 little ones seriously considered going to Jackson (30 miles for us) and FReeping the protestors.

In one of the stories, the husband of the daughter, who was 18 when her family was killed, said something to the extent that the protestors never held a candle light vigil at the gravesites of the Alday family.

Isaac's lawyer also said in court that many of us did things when we were 19 that we regret today. Um, excuse me...I don't think MURDER is a youthful mistake. Rolling a house with TP? Sure. Viciously slaughtering a family? Gee, let me think about it...

[MeekOneGOP]

Liberals are thoughtless, terrorist/murderer supporters.