Convicted Georgia murderer to be executed

The Georgia Department of Corrections announced that the Cobb Superior Court has ordered the execution of convicted murderer Virgil Delano Presnell Jr. to take place in May. The Cobb Superior Court ordered that Presnell’s execution be carried out between May 17 and May 24; May 17 was chosen by Department of Corrections Commissioner Timothy Ward. Presnell will be put to death at 7 p.m. that day at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, in Jackson.

Presnell was found guilty in the 1976 kidnapping and murder of an 8-year-old girl and the kidnapping and rape of a 10-year-old girl more than 45 years ago. He was convicted on charges including malice murder, kidnapping, and rape and was sentenced to death. His death sentence was overturned in 1992 but was reinstated in March 1999.

Evidence at trial outlined in a Georgia Supreme Court ruling said that on May 3, 1976, Presnell staked out a Cobb County elementary school where he saw a 10-year-old girl walking home on a wooded trail. Returning the next day, he abducted the girl and her 8-year-old friend when they came walking down the trail. According to police, Presnell drove the two girls to a secluded wooded area, made them undress, and raped the older girl, the ruling says. The younger girl tried to run as he took her back to the car, but Presnell caught her, shoved her face underwater in a creek, and drowned her. Presnell locked the older girl in his car trunk, began driving, and dropped her in a wooded area when he got a flat tire. Presnell had told the girl he’d return, but she heard sounds from a nearby gas station and walked there. She described Presnell and his car with a flat tire to police, who found him changing his tire at his apartment complex near where he’d left the older girl. 

Presnell initially denied everything but later led police to the 8-year-old girl’s body and confessed, the ruling says. Police found a handgun and child pornography showing young girls in his bedroom.

Presnell’s lawyers argued that he was born to a teenage mother who drank and smoked heavily throughout her pregnancy, causing Presnell to suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome that damaged his brain. They claimed this kept him “from ever developing into a functioning, responsible adult.”

Presnell will be the first person executed by the state of Georgia since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. The last person executed by Georgia was Donnie Cleveland Lance in January 2020. Georgia uses an injection of the sedative pentobarbital to carry out executions.