Chaya Tong is from the Bay Area, California and is now an undergraduate at Emory University, majoring in English and biology. She is a writer and editor at The Emory Wheel and a student researcher with The Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project, investigating racially motivated murders in Georgia during the modern civil rights era.
Willie James Pye was put to death by lethal injection in the state’s first execution in over four years last week. But despite the case’s significance and national attention over Pye, the public’s view of the execution itself was restricted under state protocol blocking critical parts of the process.
Late Friday afternoon, the state Environmental Protection Division announced its decision to issue draft permits to Twin Pines, triggering a 60-day public comment period.
Thousands of Georgians were once confined to the world’s largest mental institution, authorized by the state in 1837 as the “Lunatic, Idiot, and Epileptic Asylum.”
It takes around four hours by car to go from Savannah to Atlanta — not an easy trip to make in time for a 9 a.m. weekday meeting of the state Board of Natural Resources.
