In Georgia

"DeKalb, Fulton juries resist giving death penalty," is the report in Sunday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution, written by David Simpson and Steve Visser.

After the death penalty trial of Brian Nichols, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard plans to seek the ultimate punishment in eight more murder trials.

In adjacent DeKalb County, District Attorney Gwen Keyes Fleming’s office is scheduled to make its opening statement in a death penalty trial Monday. And she is seeking death sentences in two more pending cases.

Getting death sentences in those cases could represent the turning of a historical tide. Fulton County juries went eight years without approving a death sentence until this summer. In DeKalb County, the last death sentence was 19 years ago.

Both counties have large African-American populations, and numerous studies and opinion polls have found blacks more likely than whites to suspect bias in the criminal justice system and to oppose the death penalty.

But Howard and Keyes Fleming, both African-American prosecutors, argue that some cases are heinous enough to merit a death sentence.

Howard’s office won a death sentence this summer for a man who shot to death three people, including a child.

Keyes Fleming approved a death penalty prosecution against Clayton Ellington, who goes on trial Monday on charges he hammered to death his wife and twin 2-year-old sons.

DeKalb has two other death penalty cases pending: one involves another child killing, and the other the slaying of two police officers.

Keyes Fleming declined to be interviewed about jurors’ attitudes toward the death penalty, instead issuing a brief statement expressing her “faith in all our jurors.”

In Fulton County, Howard’s white predecessor, Lewis Slaton, complained that jurors were too reluctant to impose the sentence.

Howard, who was elected to replace Slaton in 1996, said the county’s jurors now are becoming “educated” on the appropriateness of the death penalty in heinous cases.

“For a long time in our county, we never had a death penalty case at all, and we are at an early point in our county of asking our citizens to do that,” Howard said.