MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — A clemency hearing for the man condemned to die by lethal injection next month for the 1996 shotgun slaying of Donovan Corey Parks of Milledgeville is set for Wednesday, May 2 with the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles in Atlanta.

Robert Earl Butts, Jr. is scheduled to be put to death by the state at 7 p.m. May 3.

Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit Superior Court Chief Judge William A. Prior Jr. signed an order Monday calling for the execution of Butts. Shortly after the court order was signed, officials with the Georgia Department of Corrections set the execution to take place at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison near Jackson.

Butts’ request to appeal his Nov. 21, 1998 murder conviction in Baldwin County Superior Court in Milledgeville was denied Jan. 22 of this year by the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. 

Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit District Attorney Stephen A. Bradley, who helped prosecute the case when he was senior assistant district attorney under then District Attorney Fredric Bright, said the upcoming hearing will address the facts of the case.

Those expected to testify before the state parole board will be Baldwin County Sheriff Bill Massee, Bobby Langford, a retired detective with the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office and Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills, who at the time of the crime was lead detective with the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office.

“The investigators will talk about the immediate circumstances surrounding the murder, then we have any of the family members who want to speak describe the very personal pain and impact upon Donovan Corey Parks’ family,” Bradley told the newspaper Thursday afternoon. 

Steve Hayes, communications director with the state Board of Pardons and Paroles, said in a press release issued Thursday that the state parole board has the sole constitutional authority to grant clemency and commute or reduce a death sentence to life in prison with either the possibility of parole or to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“The sole purpose of this meeting is to receive information for or against clemency for Butts,” Hayes said.

The meeting will be held in the state parole board’s central office, located in the East Tower of the Floyd Veterans Memorial  Building at 2 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive S.E. in Atlanta.

“It is anticipated the meeting will be closed as authorized by (state law),” Hayes said, who cited the legal code as O.C.G.A. 50-14-3.

After the meeting, which begins at 9 a.m., members of the state board of paroles may decide to commute Butts’ sentence, issue a stay of execution of up to 90-days or deny clemency, Hayes said.

He explained that the state board of paroles maintains what was described as a comprehensive file on each death row inmate in Georgia.

“The file contains the history of the life of the condemned inmate, including the inmate’s history, and the circumstances of the crime that was committed resulting in the death sentence,” Hayes said.

There will be no public comments made at the hearing, and no other business will be conducted, Hayes said.

Members of the media covering the case will have the opportunity to take photographs prior to the meeting, and after the meeting, they will be afforded the opportunity to talk with those who appeared before members of the state paroles board.

Butts was convicted in Baldwin County Superior Court of murder, armed robbery, hijacking a motor vehicle, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, and possession of a sawed-off shotgun. The same jury that convicted Butts later deliberated and reached a unanimous decision that the punishment for those crimes should be affixed as death.