sentence, it was customary for an automatic appeal to be filed in every new death row inmate's case, thereby delaying the imposition of death sentences until the appeals process is finished or inmates waive their remaining appeals. In 1976, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld Smith's death sentence. While Smith was on death row, Rebecca's attorneys appealed her death sentence on the grounds that women were underrepresented in her jury pool. While Smith's jury was picked from the same pool as Rebecca's jury, he did not appeal on those grounds, as his attorneys were unaware of a recent Supreme Court decision that found that the under-representation of women in a jury pool was a violation of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Rebecca won a retrial on those grounds, which took place after a change of venue to Gwinnett County, Georgia, and was eventually re-sentenced to life imprisonment. Shortly afterwards, Smith's death sentence was upheld as the same federal court that overturned Rebecca's sentence refused to grant Smith a new trial. Smith was the first person on Georgia's death row to have an execution date scheduled following the death penalty moratorium that was established with the U.S. Supreme Court's 1972 Furman v. Georgia ruling and lifted by their 1976 Gregg v. Georgia ruling. Because of this distinction, Smith's case garnered significant amounts of press and notoriety. In October 1976, after Smith won a stay of execution, Atlanta's then-mayor, Maynard Jackson, protested the execution. At the time, Jackson was a member of a group called the Georgia Committee Against the Death Penalty, and he and other members of the group called for then-Governor George Busbee to halt all executions during his term of office. When referencing the return of the death penalty nationwide, Jackson stated, "This backward step cannot be tolerated. The death penalty historically has been applied selectively, with primarily the oppressed and the disadvantaged poor people, black and white, uneducated people bearing the brunt of this brutal, barbaric punishment." Jackson was joined by then-State Representative David Scott, the executive director of the Georgia branch of the American Civil Liberties Union Gene Guerrero, and the executive director of the Atlanta branch of the NAACP, Jondell Johnson, in calling for a 90-day stay for John Smith. No executions were carried out during Busbee's term. Execution and aftermath The day prior to Smith's execution, the Georgia Pardon and Paroles Board denied