Hearings for Foster re-trial begin

Over 30 years after his original trial began, the preliminary stages of a new trial were set in motion on Thursday for Timothy Tyrone Foster.

Foster, who is now 50, was sentenced to death in 1987 for the murder of retired school teacher Queen Madge White during a burglary at her home at Highland Circle — he was 18 at the time of the incident. The 79-year-old woman had been attacked and molested before being strangled to death.

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction two years ago, on the grounds of black jurors being excluded from his original trial.

Then-district attorney Steve Lanier, who died this year, struck all four black potential jurors before the trial. By filing an open records request, Foster’s lawyers discovered notes from an investigator in the DA’s office which the high court ruled pointed toward the specific exclusion of those jurors based on race.

Once his conviction was overturned, Foster was moved back to the Floyd County Jail from Georgia’s death row in Jackson. At a preliminary hearing in February, the state expressed its intent to seek the death penalty and the process began again.

Part of that is a process called the Unified Appeal, essentially a checklist designed to protect a defendant’s rights.

The bevy of motions discussed in Floyd County Superior Court on Thursday covered a wide range of topics including attempting to suppress Foster’s comments after his arrest to general challenges to the constitutionality of the death penalty and lethal injections.

While many of the motions discussed in Thursday’s hearing did not necessarily center on this particular case, Christian Lamar of the Georgia Public Defender Council said the motions are not filed capriciously — there is an intent.

“This is how the law gets changed,” Lamar said.

In his original trial, and later in appeals, Foster’s attorneys contended he should not be able to face the death penalty because he was developmentally delayed at the time of the incident and functionally a juvenile.

“Mr. Foster was slightly over 18 at the time of the event,” Jerry Word of the Capital Defender’s office said. He contended that Foster’s intellectual capacity was much lower than his “chronological age.”

Along with several other points of contention, Assistant District Attorney Kevin Salmon said the issues — including Foster’s developmental issues — were addressed in proceedings prior to Foster’s 1987 trial.

Another round of hearings are set for May in Judge Billy Sparks’ courtroom.