Incarceration & POst-Conviction efforts: 1999–PRESENT
STATE HABEAS CASE
In 1999, Christina filed a petition for habeas corpus in Washington County Superior Court.
Christina appearing in court for a pre-trial hearing in 1992
A petition for habeas corpus initiates a civil suit in which an incarcerated person—sometimes represented by an attorney—challenges the state’s grounds for continued incarceration. Habeas petitions may be filed in both state and federal court, but federal habeas cases involve stringent time limits which—absent new evidence in Christinas’s case—preclude her from seeking relief.
Based on Christina’s understanding at the time of her plea, she believed the plea agreement meant that she would be “out in four years.” She would become eligible for parole after seven years’ time served, and she had already served three in the county jail when she pled. 1999 made seven years since Christina’s arrest.
Once it became clear that the parole board had no intention of granting her parole after seven years, Christina sued the state of Georgia for wrongful incarceration.
Christina’s habeas case took place across four evidentiary hearings between 2001 and 2002. Her hearings were delayed because Christina developed serious health issues (requiring surgery) soon after her initial filing in 1999.
Christina was represented by Middledgeville attorney J. Philip Carr. Carr’s primary claim was that Christina’s plea was not “knowing, voluntary, and intelligent,” as required by the Supreme Court case Boykin v. Alabama. After Amber died, Christina sunk into a deep depression, against which the county jail appeared to throw every medication in the book. The combination of antidepressants and antipsychotics—the latter of which no physician nor therapist has recommended for Christina since—affected Christina’s executive functioning and memory skills at the time of her plea.
Jimmy Berry testified in defense of his own representation of Christina. He stated that he advised Christina to take the plea for two reasons: first, to avoid the death penalty, and second, to avoid a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years in prison before parole eligibility, which would have likely been the case had she been found guilty after trial. He argued that Christina seemed to understand this at the time of her plea. Christina maintains that she understood her options as “immediate execution” or “serve four more years in prison, and you’ll likely get parole.”
Carr also deposed Dr. Thomas H. Sachy to help prove his case. Dr. Sachy explained that perphenazine—most often used to treat schizophrenia—can cause “cognitive impairment,” and “block someone’s ability to think clearly” if given to those who do not need antipsychotic treatment. While in the county jail awaiting trial, Christina was not only being given a drug she didn’t need, but was given “way too much of it.”
Christina remembers the antipsychotics were paired with antidepressants and unknown medications that did not follow a regular schedule. She recalled, “ . . . they didn’t give them to me like they were supposed to . . . Some days I was given them twice a day, other days, only once, sometimes not at all. I stayed in a stupor a lot of the time, sleeping round the clock.”
Christina lost her state habeas case on November 18, 2002. In 2007, Christina’s habeas attorney J. Philip Carr was convicted of six counts of child molestation and two counts of statutory rape and sentenced to 40 years in prison. In 2018, federal agents raided the home of Dr. Thomas H. Sachy in connection to the overdose deaths of two Georgians. Sachy eventually surrendered his medical license and served more than five years in jail following lengthy federal criminal proceedings.
RICHARD ALLEN and SUE HORN
By 2008, Christina felt as though her legal luck had run out: her first attorney refused to investigate her case further, and the second had been sent to prison. But Christina’s friends managed to put together funds to hire Richard Allen, a private criminal defense attorney who appeared genuinely committed to pursuing post-conviction options for Christina, no matter how difficult the road ahead.
Allen first approached Sue Horn, editor-in-chief and founder at the Carroll Star News, to discuss Christina’s case from the perspective of the community. Allen’s “giant stack of papers,” as Horn remembers, was enough to convince Horn of Christina’s innocence. Horn went on to publish the editorial “The real story of Christina Resch Boyer: Did a “perfect storm” of events lead to life imprisonment?” in the Carroll Star News.
Tragically, Allen died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 2009, apparently right before he was set to file new paperwork in Christina’s case.
When we first met Sue Horn in March 2019, she explained that the continued bad luck in Christina’s case—her patchy legal representation, her status as an outsider, the fact of her “paranormal past,” and other evidentiary issues—inspired her title. “It was all piecemeal, and that’s why I came up with the title [of the article] the ‘Perfect Storm’ of events. It was the worst. Everything went against her.”
Horn believes that times and attitudes may have shifted enough that the state of Georgia might eventually grant Christina some modicum of justice. “All of the things that took Christina down, her reputation, who was she, living with [her] boyfriend, [that she] doesn’t go to church, doesn’t have friends,” Horn told us, “those things would not apply today.”
PAROLE POSSIBILITIES
Georgia state law indicates that any parole-eligible inmate serving a felony sentence in the custody of the Department of Corrections of the state of Georgia is automatically considered for parole, without application. Christina falls under this category within the corrections system. Christina was sentenced to life with parole eligibility in 1994 when she accepted her plea deal.
There are a number of procedures that are integral for parole determination, and are automatically engaged when the defendant enters prison to complete his/her sentence.
According to the Southern Center for Human Rights’ “Parole Handbook,” there is a seven-step process to the parole review. The seven steps are initiated prior to the inmate’s first parole hearing, and the parole materials can be updated if new information or new records are unfurled during the duration of the sentence. According to Georgia’s official government run website, “Life [-] sentenced inmates who have been denied parole and have a scheduled reconsideration date may receive expedited parole reviews if the Board receives new information that warrants and earlier review.”
Part of the seven steps of the parole investigation include social, legal, and personal components in which a parole officer contacts the inmate’s family members and peers for information about his/her candidacy for parole, and also conducts an investigation into the legal proceedings surrounding his/her case. The full seven steps occur before the first parole evaluation, and then subsequently only the final step, the “review” portion, occurs when the prisoner is eligible for his/her next parole hearing.
Despite suffering consistent injustice, Christina has dedicated her time in prison to helping others and completing her education.
According to the Georgia Parole Board's website individuals serving life sentences, that were convicted prior to 1995, were eligible for parole after their first seven years are served. In 1995, guidelines changed so that individuals with life sentences would have to wait 14 years before facing a parole board. Christina fell into the first category (pre-1995) and found herself before the parole board after she had been incarcerated for seven years. When she was denied then for the first time, she had to wait another eight years before facing the parole board again.
Then, after another eight years (at this point, Christina had been in prison for 15), she was denied again and told that she would face the board after yet another five. After the next five, they said three. Then, after three, it was two. Then one more year. In November, 2019, Christina was up for her seventh parole hearing. After her attorney submitted a legal packet warranting Christina’s good behavior and fighting for her parole, she was still denied.
Since few inmates with life sentences are granted parole after their initial eligibility dates, there is also a clemency option. The majority of the members of the parole board, after consideration of the relevant parole materials of the inmate, can grant clemency to the inmate. This is rare.
Although heartbroken after yet another denial, Christina has continued to provide support to her peers in Pulaski State Prison and keep herself busy. Not only does she voluntarily tutor fellow students in her college classes and practice her faith alongside members of her bible study class, but she is also working towards a Bachelor’s Degree: majoring in Communications with a minor in Business Administration, as well as her Associate’s degree in Church Administration through the Christian College and Seminary.