A known killer reportedly confessed to the murder for which Larry Moon was executed
Larry Eugene Moon was convicted and sentenced to death in 1988 in Catoosa County, Georgia, for a 1984 murder to which another man, Mickey Lee Davis, reportedly twice confessed. Despite doubts about Moon's guilt, he was executed on March 25, 2003, at the state prison in Jackson, Georgia.
The crime
Ricky Callahan, 24, left his home in Ringgold, Georgia, the night of November 24, 1984, telling his wife he was going to a convenience store to buy headache medicine. His body was found the next day in a gravel pit outside of Ringgold. He had been shot twice in the head.
Moon and Davis, who were ex-convicts and longtime friends, were in Ringgold around the time of the crime; Moon and his girlfriend, Sharon Byers, shared a Thanksgiving meal with Davis at a Ringgold motel on November 22.
Moon's arrest and Davis's first alleged confession
Three weeks after the murder, Moon, then 40, was arrested driving a stolen car near Oneida, Tennessee. In the car were several weapons, including a pistol that ballistics tests would indicate was the weapon with which Callahan had been slain and music tapes that had belonged to Callahan. The prosecution claimed that, after murdering Callahan, Moon stole his car and abandoned it in Decatur, Alabama, where he stole another car. The second car was abandoned in Oneida, where the car Moon was driving at the time of his arrest was stolen.
Davis, meanwhile, went to Louisiana, where he worked in a shipyard with his cousin, Joe Allen Gann. When Davis learned that Moon had been arrested and charged with the Callahan murder, he allegedly confided to Gann that he had committed the crime and that Moon was innocent.
Davis's arrest and second alleged confession
On August 3, 1985, Davis was arrested and charged with the hit-style murder of Cletus Price in Sequatchie County, Tennessee. Davis allegedly had been hired by Price's wife to kill her elderly, nearly blind husband, who was shot to death while reading his Bible on October 23, 1984, a month and a day before the Callahan murder.
In 1986, while Davis was awaiting trial for the Price murder, he occupied a cell in the Sequatchie County jail next to that of a burglar named Jimmy Ray Farley. Davis allegedly told Farley the same thing he had told Gann — that he, not Moon, had killed Ricky Callahan. On September 19, 1986, a week before the scheduled openings of Davis's trial for the Price murder and Moon's trial for the Callahan murder, Davis escaped from jail.
Davis's purported confessions were not known at the time of Moon's trial; Gann and Farley had not come forward. Moon did not testify on his own behalf, understandably, given his own extensive felony record. Thus, in view of the physical evidence found in Moon's possession, it was not surprising when a Catoosa County jury returned a guilty verdict and sentenced Moon to death.
Davis remained at large until July of 1988 — six months after the Moon trial — when he was fatally injured in a motorcycle accident. His last conscious act was to pull a gun on the first police officer to arrive at the scene of the accident.
Witnesses to Davis's confessions come forward
It was not until 1995, after Moon's state appeals were decided, that his appellate lawyers obtained an affidavit from Gann saying that Davis had admitted the Callahan murder. "One night we were hanging out together and Mickey called home to talk to his family," the Gann affidavit said. "Mickey . . . learned that Larry Moon was going to be tried for capital murder in Catossa County. When Mickey got off the phone he told me about what was going on with Larry. . . . Mickey said that he knew that Larry Moon did not do the murder. He said that he did it. He said that Larry 'didn't have the balls to pull the trigger.' He also said that he was glad that Larry was keeping his mouth shut."
In 2003, as Moon's execution approached, his counsel obtained an affidavit from Farley. "Mickey and I became pretty good friends in the jail," said the Farley affidavit. "We spent a lot of time talking with each other. Mickey saw that he could trust me so he did not have a problem talking to me about his case or his past. . . . He was in jail for killing a man for money. Peggy Price hired Mickey to kill her husband. Mickey told me that he did that killing. He also told me that he knew he was going to get the death penalty for it. . . . Mickey also told me about his friend Larry Moon. Mickey told me that Larry Moon was getting charged with the murder of a man in Catoosa County, Georgia. Mickey told me that Moon did not do that killing. Mickey told me that he shot and killed the man. Mickey was totally serious when he told me this."
Final efforts to save Moon fail
Gann and Farley had never met each other and both said they had never met Moon but only knew of him through their conversations with Davis. Yet despite the consistency of their stories and the lack of any apparent motive to lie, their statements did Moon no good. His appeals had been exhausted — Moon v. State, 258 Ga. 748 (1988) and Zant v. Moon and vice versa, 264 Ga. 93 (1994). His only hope was the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, which on March 24, 2003, refused to delay the execution.
The sentence was carried out by lethal injection the next evening at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, south of Altanta. Moon's final words were, "I am innocent. I did not kill Ricky Callahan." He was pronounced dead at 7:23 p.m.
The foregoing summary was prepared by Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions. The summary may be quoted, reprinted, or posted on other web sites with appropriate attribution.
Case data:
Jurisdiction: Catoosa County, Georgia
Date of birth: November 5, 1994
Date of crime: November 24, 1984
Age at time of arrest: 40
Date of arrest: December 14, 1984
Gender: Male
Race: White
Trial counsel: Ralph Van Pelt and Glen Vey, court appointed
Convicted of: Murder and armed robbery
Prior adult felony record: At least 13 prior convictions (8 subsequently
vacated)
Trial judge: John B. Tucker
Prosecutors: David (Red) Lomanick and David Dunn
No.of victims: 1
Age of victim: 24
Gender of victim: Male
Race of victim: White
Relationship of victim to defendant: None
Evidence used to obtain conviction: Physical and ballistic
Major issues on appeal: Ineffective assistance of counsel. Racial discrimination
in jury selection. Presentation of false and misleading testimony at sentencing
(citing by prosecution of convictions that had been vacated).
Evidence suggesting innocence: Confession of another person.
Date of execution: March 25, 2003
Time lapse arrest to execution: 220
Final appellate counsel(s): Brian Mendelsohn, Federal Defender Program,
Atlanta, and Charles Surasky, Smith, Currie & Hancock, Atlanta
