Criminal Law
Lawyers Seek to Delay the Execution of a Georgia Man
Lawyers for a Georgia man scheduled to be put to death next week for killing an 8-year-old girl 46 years ago are trying to delay the execution.
Virgil Delano Presnell Jr., 68, is scheduled to die May 17 at the state prison in Jackson by injection of the sedative pentobarbital. He killed the 8-year-old girl and raped her 10-year-old friend after abducting them as they walked home from school in Cobb County, just outside Atlanta, on May 4, 1976.
He was convicted in August 1976 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.
