Stacey Humphreys
Stacey Ian Humphreys is an American convicted double murderer sentenced to death in the U.S. state of Georgia. On November 3, 2003, Humphreys, who was then out on parole for a 1993 felony theft conviction, attacked two real estate agents in their office in Powder Springs, Georgia, forcing them to strip nude before he shot them, leading to the deaths of 33-year-old Cyndi Williams and 21-year-old Lori Brown. Humphreys was found guilty of malice murder on both counts, sentenced to death in 2007, and is currently on death row, awaiting execution.
Background
During his trial in 2007, Humphreys's defense attorneys stated that Humphreys had survived child abuse. During the sentencing phase of his death penalty trial, Humphreys's sister testified that their father used to beat Humphreys with his fists and would hit her with belts and sticks. At the age of 3, Humphreys experienced a skull fracture; throughout his childhood, he was observed to have cigarette burns on his body. A clinical psychologist who testified to Humphreys's mental state during the sentencing phase of his trial in September 2007 also stated that Humphreys's father would sit atop his body and beat him in the head as a child, although Humphreys had no memory of those attacks. The same psychologist said he believed Humphreys exhibited symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, autism, and a dissociative disorder with "lapses of awareness", the latter exemplified by a time Humphreys drove "all the way to New Mexico" without any awareness of what he was doing; a different psychologist supported the first psychologist's findings of PTSD.Humphreys' criminal history began in October 1993, when he pleaded guilty to charges of burglary, car theft, and forgery, connected to his breaking into a car and stealing a different car; he received a 10-year prison sentence for those crimes and was ordered to serve three, with the other seven to be served on probation. In March 1997, Humphreys violated probation by impersonating a police officer at a mall in Kennesaw, Georgia, leading to the revocation of his parole and his return to prison to serve the rest of his sentence behind bars. In 1998, the Pardon and Parole Board voted for Humphreys to be released in October 2002, fifteen months before the end of his sentence, on conditional release. Upon his scheduled release in October 2002, Humphreys moved in with his grandmother; he did not violate his conditional parole between his release and the murders of Brown and Williams. His parole was scheduled to end in January 2004. The state Board of Pardons and Paroles spokesperson, Heather Hedrick, stated that Humphreys was classed as "a property crime offender with no history of any sort of assault or violence in his past at all".
Murders
On November 3, 2003, Stacey Ian Humphreys committed the murders of two real estate agents in Powder Springs, Georgia.On that day, Humphreys, who was just released 13 months prior on parole for a 1993 felony theft conviction, walked into a home construction company's sales office while armed with a gun. At that time, two real estate agents, 33-year-old Cynthia "Cyndi" Williams and 21-year-old Lori Brown, were working in the office. Humphreys confronted the two women at gunpoint, forcing them to give up the access codes of their bank cards and to strip themselves naked. Humphreys would first choke Williams with her underwear tied around her neck, before he made her lie down on her hands and knees, and he shot her to death, firing one shot each to her head and back.
After murdering Williams, Humphreys also killed Brown, forcing her to kneel with her head facing the floor before he shot her execution-style. After the fatal shootings, Humphreys stole the women's driver's licenses and ATM and credit cards, and he also withdrew more than $3,000 from their accounts. After Humphreys left the office at around 1:30 pm, a builder operating a nearby office would later find the bodies of both Williams and Brown, and called the police. An autopsy report showed that in the case of Williams, one of the bullets went through her lung and heart from her back, while another had penetrated her head. In the case of Brown, she died from a single gunshot wound to her head, and she also had some hemorrhaging in her throat, suggesting she was likely choked or held in a headlock before the shooting.
Arrest and murder charges
Humphreys was later identified as a suspect behind the murders, and he was placed on the wanted list, after a co-worker confirmed that the description of the suspect and his vehicle matched those of Humphreys and his vehicle, and although the police managed to secure a meeting between Humphreys and his parole officer on the morning of November 7, 2003, Humphreys did not attend the meeting and went into hiding from the authorities.On November 8, 2003, five days after the murders, Humphreys was arrested in Hartford, Wisconsin, where he was pursued by police, after deputies recognized him and his vehicle, which matched the description provided by Georgia state authorities in the fugitive list.
After some investigations, the police managed to match the 9 mm bullets found on the women to a Ruger handgun that they recovered from Humphrey's rented Jeep. The police also found bloodstains on Humphreys's gun and truck, and forensic tests matched the blood on the gun to Williams's DNA, and Brown's DNA were matched to the blood on the truck.
Trial and sentencing
By April 2004, the prosecution had intended to seek the death penalty for Stacey Humphreys. Before the trial was to begin, the trial venue was changed from Cobb County to Glynn County due to pretrial publicity.On September 18, 2007, the trial of Humphreys began before a Glynn County jury. During the trial, the prosecution contended that robbery was the motive of Humphreys to commit the murders, given that Humphreys confessed to spending $565 of the victims' money on his Dodge Durango, and at the time of his arrest, the police found about $800 in cash in Humphreys's possession. Jimmy Berry, Humphreys's lawyer, conceded that his client indeed confessed to the murders, but he submitted that Humphreys could not remember his whereabouts or actions on the date of the double murder, stating that his client suffered from bouts of memory lapses.
On September 26, 2007, the jury found Humphreys guilty of murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, kidnapping and armed robbery. Shortly after the conviction of Humphreys, the jury began its sentencing phase, and deliberate whether to sentence Humphreys to life in prison without the possibility of parole or the death penalty. Under Georgia state law, offenders could only receive a death sentence on the basis that the jury's vote for capital punishment was unanimous, or a split jury vote would otherwise result in life imprisonment.
The prosecution sought the death penalty for Humphreys, stating that he had committed the murders to get money and resolve his car payment, while the defense asked for mercy, claiming that Humphreys was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome and planned to use the defense of diminished responsibility to argue against the death sentence. During the sentencing hearing, the friends and family members of the victims were allowed to testify in court. Out of all these witnesses, Williams's husband told the jurors that he was still "functionally depressed" by the murder of his wife, and it affected him so much so that he considered resigning from his job and moving. In general, the victim's friends and families spoke up about their grief of losing Williams and Brown, and of the murders' impacts on their respective lives.
On September 30, 2007, the jury returned with the verdict, unanimously recommending the death penalty for Humphreys, and he was thus sentenced to death.
After the verdict was passed, Cobb County District Attorney Pat Head expressed that the death penalty was an appropriate punishment for Humphreys due to the brutality of the killings, and stated that Humphreys "took away all their humanity". Humphreys was reportedly expressionless and silent when the death sentence was meted out, and in response, the families of Brown and Williams cried and embraced quietly at the time of the ruling, and Brown's father stated that he agreed with the death sentence, stating a terrible crime should end with a harsh penalty, while Williams's sister stated she received some relief with the jury's verdict, even though the grief of their family would not disappear.
Death row and execution stay
As of 2025, Humphreys remains incarcerated on death row at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison.Appeals
On March 15, 2010, the Georgia Supreme Court dismissed Humphreys's appeal against his death sentence.On June 11, 2024, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Humphreys's federal appeal.
On October 14, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Humphreys's final appeal. Earlier on in his appeals, Humphreys's counsel submitted that "extreme juror misconduct" had breached their client's right to a impartial jury and trial. It was revealed that prior to Humphreys's sentencing, one of the female jurors insisted on imposing the death penalty even though the other 11 jurors were in favor of life imprisonment without parole. The one holdout juror had communicated to the court during jury selection that an unnamed escaped convict had committed armed robbery and attempted rape against her but that she had been able to escape the attack before he fully entered her home and that, despite her traumatic experience, she would be able to adjudge Humphreys's case fairly. However, during Humphreys's sentencing phase, she revealed to the jurors that the escaped convict had in actuality removed her clothes and assaulted her in her bed, and she communicated to her fellow jurors that she would not consider a life sentence for Humphreys and "had her mind made up" with regards to Humphreys receiving a death sentence. Other jurors submitted affidavits after the trial's conclusion attesting that the holdout juror "scream" "curs", and "vowed to stay there as long as it took to reach a death sentence," and jurors told the judge they were deadlocked; the jury foreperson asked to be removed from the case due to the holdout juror's "hostile" behavior", and jurors cited the holdout's behavior as making them feel "intimidated," but the judge instructed the jury to continue deliberating. In their first two submitted deliberations, all jurors with the exception of the holdout voted for life without parole; on their final vote, the jury submitted a unanimous vote of death for Humphreys. In his appeals, Humphreys's claims of juror misconduct were rejected due to Georgia abiding by a "no-impeachment" rule that precludes post-trial testimonies and affidavits from jurors from being admissible evidence to overturn a trial verdict. With reference to Humphreys's claims of juror misconduct in her dissenting judgement, Justice Sonia Sotomayor cited this as a "single juror's extraordinary misconduct" that tainted the basis of Humphreys's death sentence and cited it should not be upheld. Nevertheless, the majority judges still chose to reject Humphreys's arguments and dismissed his appeal.
2025 death warrant
On December 3, 2025, Stacey Humphreys's death warrant was signed by Cobb County Superior Court Chief Judge Ann B. Harris, and his death sentence was set to be carried out on December 17, 2025.Humphreys was the first death row inmate scheduled to be executed in Georgia in 2025, more than a year after the state resumed executions in March 2024, when Willie Pye was executed for his ex-girlfriend's murder following a four-year moratorium due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. As with all of Georgia's lethal injection executions, Humphreys was to be put to death with a single-drug injection of the short-acting barbiturate pentobarbital.
Humphreys's lawyers filed a last-minute appeal to stay his execution. The defense argued that Humphreys should not be executed and he was entitled for legal protection under a COVID-19 agreement, which was made during the state's judicial emergency in midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The agreement stated that any inmates who lost their appeals for rehearing to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals would not be executed until certain conditions were fulfilled. However, as the emergency ended in June 2021 and Humphreys himself exhausted his appeals in 2025, he was not among the inmates covered by the agreement. The defense argued that this agreement could create a "distinct, disfavored class" of prisoners not granted equal protection and rights due to it protecting a certain group of condemned inmates, but the prosecution rebutted that Humphreys's rights were not violated and pointed out that similar arguments were made by another condemned inmate Willie Pye before his execution in 2024.
On December 11, 2025, U.S. District Court Judge Leigh Martin May denied Humphreys's appeal to stay his execution. A clemency hearing was scheduled for December 16, 2025, the eve of Humphreys's upcoming execution.
During the final week before his execution, Humphreys was allowed to request a special last meal in advance. According to the Georgia Department of Corrections, Humphreys ordered barbecue beef brisket, pork ribs, a bacon double cheeseburger, french fries, coleslaw, cornbread, buffalo wings, meat lovers pan pizza, vanilla ice cream, and two lemon-lime sodas.
On December 15, 2025, the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles released an order suspending Humphreys's execution and postponing his clemency hearing "until further notice," amid allegations by the defendant's lawyers of conflicts of interest against two of the board's members.
Aftermath
In April 2004, a scholarship, Lori Brown Memorial Scholarship, was set up in memory of Brown, one of the real estate agents murdered by Stacey Humphreys. A high school graduate, who was set to major in business in Kennesaw State University, was awarded the scholarship that same month.In April 2023, a true crime documentary series, titled The Real Murders of Atlanta, re-enacted the murders of Cyndi Williams and Lori Brown, and first aired through American television network Oxygen.