Official Code of Georgia Annotated

Title 17. CRIMINAL PROCEDURE · Chapter 9. VERDICT AND JUDGMENT GENERALLY · Article 1. GENERAL PROVISIONS

17-9-3. Recommendations for mercy in capital cases other than those of homicide; effect of no recommendation for mercy in capital cases generally and where defendant under age of 17 at time of commission of offense.

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Current through: Including Acts of the 2025 Regular Session of the General Assembly.

In all capital cases, other than those of homicide, when the verdict is ‘‘guilty,’’ with a recommendation for mercy, it shall be legal and shall mean imprisonment for life. When the verdict is ‘‘guilty,’’ without a recommendation for mercy, it shall be legal and shall mean that the convicted person shall be sentenced to death. When it is shown that a person convicted of a capital offense without a recommendation for mercy had not reached his seventeenth birthday at the time of the commission of the offense, the punishment of such person shall not be death but shall be imprisonment for life.

The notes below are printed with the section but are not enacted law (O.C.G.A. § 1-1-1(c)). They are shown apart from the text.

History

Ga. L. 1875, p. 106, § 2; Code 1882, § 4646a; Penal Code 1895, § 1034; Penal Code 1910, § 1060; Code 1933, § 27-2302; Ga. L. 1963, p. 122, § 2; Ga. L. 1974, p. 352, § 2.

Cross references

Further provisions regarding jury recommendations in death penalty cases, § 17-10-2. Finding by jury of statutory aggravating circumstance and recommendation of death sentence as prerequisites to imposition of death sentence, § 17-10-31.

Law reviews

For article discussing the 1968 Criminal Code of Georgia, comparing preexisting provisions of Georgia criminal law, see 5 Ga. St. B.J. 185 (1968). For article, ‘‘Jury Sentencing in Georgia — Time for a Change?,’’ see 5 Ga. St. B.J. 421 (1969). For article recommending more consistency in age requirements of laws pertaining to the welfare of minors, see 6 Ga. St. B.J. 189 (1969). For article, ‘‘The Execution of America’s Children,’’ see 6 Ga. State U.L. Rev. 403 (1990).

Other notes

U.S. Code.: Verdicts, Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Rule 31.

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Current through: Including Acts of the 2025 Regular Session of the General Assembly.

Text read from t17-(v15)-2020-pdf.pdf, Volume V15, 2020 edition, pages 979 to 980; merge action: carried; file SHA-256 0b0d45f9c609.

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