Georgia has just passed into law rules that dramatically increase transparency into last ditch efforts by inmates on death row to save their own lives.

Or maybe it hasn’t.

The processes in question are clemency proceedings in which defense attorneys argue before the State Board of Pardons and Parole that the inmate has changed since conviction to the point that they don’t deserve to die. Prosecutors alternatively argue that the jury got it right and the execution should proceed.

Up until now, the Board of Pardons and Parole has never explained why they bought either argument.

Georgia House Bill 71 was introduced after a rare granting of clemency, only the ninth in almost 40 years. Now it is law and legislators say the public will know how these things happen.

Unless they won’t. That a grant of clemency will be explained under the law seems like a sure thing. An explanation of a denial of clemency is another thing altogether.

Linda Jellum teaches statutory interpretation at the law school at Mercer University. Think of her as the legal version of your high school grammar teacher. When she looked at HB71 in March, she believed it would require transparency only when death sentences were commuted. After looking at what is now law, she has a different interpretation.

“It appears to me to apply both directions,” Jellum said.

That’s to say that the Board of Pardons and Paroles would have to explain itself after any decision involving a clemency hearing.

Robert Dunham heads the Death Penalty Information Center. He said if that’s true, it would be a really big deal.

“Georgia would be close to alone, if not alone in requiring the entity that makes the actual decision, to require that it state the reasons for its actions,” Dunham said.

But Dunham says that’s not the whole story.

“First of all it isn’t true. The plain language of the statute says they will be requiring the board of pardons to explain their reasons if clemency is granted,” Dunham said.

And so it goes in trying to understand HB71. No two readings are the same.

State Senator Jesse Stone helped move HB71 to the Governor’s desk. He is clear on which decisions would be public under the law.

“It said ‘Any decision relating to a request for pardon or commutation’,” Stone said.

What Stone referred to is the section of the law that reads “a written decision relating to a pardon for a serious offense or commutation of a death sentence shall Include the board's findings.....”

Stone says that subsection of the law was where legislators massaged the legal language. He believes it’s key to transparency. That’s the section that persuaded Linda Jellum.

But Robert Dunham zeroed in on the preceding subsection of the law.

It reads “A grant of clemency, pardon, parole, or other relief from sentence shall be rendered only by a written decision.”

Critics point at the lack of the word “denial” in that passage. They say it makes the law one sided.

So between the broad provisions of “relating to” clemency and the specificity of a grant, but only a grant, of clemency forcing a written opinion, what is the Board of Pardons and Paroles supposed to do?

After reconsidering both subsections of the law, Linda Jellum backtracked.

“If they deny a request to commute a death sentence, they are free to withhold that information. As I read this bill as currently written, they are free to withhold that information from the public,” Jellum said.

Jesse Stone says the intent of the bill is to aid understanding of both up or down votes on clemency requests. But Linda Jellum says legal intent doesn’t count for much in court when making sense of Georgia law.

“Georgia generally says, ‘Look, this is the bill as it was finally passed. We don't care what the legislature might have been trying to do, what the senate might have been trying to do, what the house might have been trying to do. we don't care, this is what it says. So we have to go with what it says,’ " she said.

Jesse Stone says if the Board doesn’t comply with the intent of the law, the General Assembly might take the issue up again next year.

Linda Jellum says there’s a quick, two word fix if they do.

“Under subsection 2, change the word grant to grant or denial,” she said.

The first true test of the law’s intent will come before Georgia’s next scheduled execution.

Read the version of HB71 that became law here.