ATLANTA (AP) — The fact that the COVID-19 vaccine is not available for newborn babies is shielding a group of prisoners on Georgia's death row from execution.
Executions in Georgia were halted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the state attorney general's office entered into an agreement with lawyers for people on death row to set the terms under which they could resume for a specific group of prisoners. At least one of those conditions, having to do with the availability of the COVID-19 vaccine, has not been met, and seeking an execution date for a prisoner covered by the agreement would breach the agreement, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Shukura Ingram ruled.
The agreement includes three conditions that had to be met before executions could be set for the affected prisoners: the expiration of the state’s COVID-19 judicial emergency, the resumption of normal visitation at state prisons and the availability of a COVID-19 vaccine “to all members of the public.” Once those conditions were met, the state agreed to give three months' notice before pursuing an execution warrant for one of the prisoners covered by the agreement and six months' notice for the rest.
The state has argued that the agreement should no longer apply, contending the conditions have been met. But defense attorneys say it's still valid because the vaccine isn't yet available to infants under 6 months old, and visitation at state prisons has not returned to normal.
Ingram's ruling, issued Friday, addressed only the vaccination question. She plans to handle the visitation issue separately.
Ingram wrote that the state's arguments “all boil down to an attempt to rewrite the Agreement.” The state is “(u)nhappy with the language it drafted” and wants to change it so that the condition would be satisfied once vaccines are available to “most members of the public.”
“But courts cannot rewrite contracts to relieve a party of their regrets,” she wrote. She ruled that the agreement is “binding and enforceable,” that the vaccination condition hasn't been met and that seeking an execution warrant before the requirements have been met would breach the agreement.
The state attorney general's office plans to appeal, a spokesperson said Tuesday.
Ingram noted that the Food and Drug Administration has approved clinical trials for infants under 6 months old, and newborns receive other vaccines. That shows it is possible for the COVID-19 vaccine to ultimately be available for that age group, and the state should have foreseen that that could take years, she wrote.
Experts for both sides had testified that it was probable that the COVID-19 vaccine would eventually become available to babies under the age of 6 months, Ingram wrote.
That was before Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was appointed U.S. health secretary. Kennedy last week announced that COVID-19 vaccines are no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women. A few days later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's website, which had said those groups should get the shots, was revised to say the vaccinations “may” be given to those groups.
The agreement covers fewer than 10 of the 34 people currently on Georgia's death row.
While Georgia stopped carrying out executions during the pandemic, death penalty cases continued to wind their way through the court system, and as people exhausted their appeals, they became eligible for execution.
A committee of a judicial task force on COVID-19 in early 2021 instructed lawyers for people on death row and the state attorney general’s office to come up with terms under which executions could safely resume. The two sides reached the agreement in April 2021.
The agreement only applied to people on death row whose requests to have their appeals reheard were denied by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals while the judicial emergency was in place. The agreement was to remain in effect through Aug. 1, 2022, or one year from the date on which the conditions were met — whichever was later.
The legal fight arose from a lawsuit filed when officials set a May 2022 execution date for Virgil Delano Presnell Jr. The Federal Defender Program, which represents Presnell, said the state had violated the agreement because the conditions hadn’t all been met.
Based on that argument, a Fulton County Superior Court judge halted the execution less than 24 hours before it was to take place, and the Georgia Supreme Court ruled in December 2022 that the agreement was a binding contract.
People on death row who are not covered by the agreement have since become eligible for execution. One of them, Willie James Pye, was put to death in March 2024.
FILE - Judge Shukura Ingram listens during a hearing at Fulton County Court in Atlanta on Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, File)
The leaders of Denmark and Greenland insisted Monday that the United States won't take over Greenland and demanded respect for their territorial integrity after President Donald Trump announced the appointment of a special envoy to the semi-autonomous territory.
Trump's announcement on Sunday that Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry would be the envoy prompted a new flare-up of tensions over Washington's interest in the vast territory of Denmark, a NATO ally. Denmark's foreign minister told Danish broadcasters that he would summon the U.S. ambassador to his ministry.
”We have said it before. Now, we say it again. National borders and the sovereignty of states are rooted in international law," Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and her Greenlandic counterpart, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said in a joint statement. “They are fundamental principles. You cannot annex another country. Not even with an argument about international security.”
“Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders and the U.S. shall not take over Greenland,” they added in the statement emailed by Frederiksen's office. "We expect respect for our joint territorial integrity.”
Trump called repeatedly during his presidential transition and the early months of his second term for U.S. jurisdiction over Greenland, and has not ruled out military force to take control of the mineral-rich, strategically located Arctic island. In March, Vice President JD Vance visited a remote U.S. military base in Greenland and accused Denmark of under-investing there.
The issue gradually drifted out of the headlines, but in August, Danish officials summoned the top U.S. diplomat in Copenhagen following a report that at least three people with connections to Trump had carried out covert influence operations in Greenland.
“We need Greenland for national security,” Trump told reporters on Monday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, when asked about Landry's appointment. “And if you take a look at Greenland, you look up and down the coast you have Russian and Chinese ships all over the place.”
On Sunday, Trump announced Landry's appointment, saying on social media that “Jeff understands how essential Greenland is to our National Security, and will strongly advance our Country’s Interests for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Allies, and indeed, the World.”
The U.S. president on Monday said Landry approached him about being appointing as an envoy.
“He’s a deal guy. He is a deal-maker type guy,” Trump said.
Landry wrote in a post on social media after Trump announced the appointment that “it’s an honor to serve you in this volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the U.S.” The governor will continue to serve in his elected position in Louisiana.
The Trump administration did not offer any warning ahead of the announcement, according to a Danish government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The official also said Danish officials had expected Trump to signal an aggressive approach to Greenland and the Arctic in the U.S. administration’s new national security strategy and were surprised when the document included no mention of either.
Deputy White House press secretary Anna Kelly said Monday that Trump decided to create the special envoy role because the administration views Greenland as “a strategically important location in the Arctic for maintaining peace through strength.”
Danish broadcasters TV2 and DR reported that in comments from the Faroe Islands Monday, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said he would summon the U.S. ambassador in Copenhagen, Kenneth Howery, to his ministry.
Greenland's prime minister wrote in a separate statement that Greenland had again woken up to a new announcement from the U.S. president, and that “it may sound significant. But it changes nothing for us here at home.”
Nielsen noted that Greenland has its own democracy and said that “we are happy to cooperate with other countries, including the United States, but this must always take place with respect for us and for our values and wishes.”
Earlier this month, the Danish Defense Intelligence Service said in an annual report that the U.S. is using its economic power to “assert its will” and threaten military force against friend and foe alike.
Denmark is a member of the European Union as well as NATO.
The president of the EU's executive commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said on social media that Arctic security is a “key priority” for the bloc and one on which it seeks to work with allies and partners. She also said that “territorial integrity and sovereignty are fundamental principles of international law.”
“We stand in full solidarity with Denmark and the people of Greenland,” she wrote.
Madhani reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.
President Donald Trump speaks at his Mar-a-Lago club, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
FILE - Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry speaks to reporters at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, La., Sept. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
FILE - Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, right, and Greenland's Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen smile during their meeting at Marienborg in Kongens Lyngby, Denmark, on April 27, 2025. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix via AP, File)
FILE - Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance tour the U.S. military's Pituffik Space Base in Greenland, Friday, March 28, 2025. (Jim Watson/Pool via AP, File)
FILE - Denmark's Foreign Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen speaks during a Security Council meeting at the United Nations headquarters, Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025, at U.N. headquarters. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)
