2 Former Alabama Governors Call for Commuting Dozens of Death Row Convictions

Two former governors of Alabama — Robert Bentley, a Republican who served from 2011 to 2017, and Don Siegelman, a Democrat who was in workplace from 1999 to 2003 — penned an op-ed for The Washington Post this week calling for the state to curtail its use of the demise penalty and commute the sentences of dozens of individuals on demise row.

Bentley and Siegelman famous that Alabama currently has 167 people on death row — the next quantity than some other U.S. state with the demise penalty, on a per capita foundation. The general public on demise row had been sentenced to be executed underneath disturbing circumstances, they mentioned.

“As former Alabama governors, now we have come over time to see the issues in our nation’s justice system and to view the state’s demise penalty legal guidelines specifically as legally and morally troubling,” the duo wrote. “We each presided over executions whereas in workplace, but when we had identified then what we all know now about prosecutorial misconduct, we’d have exercised our constitutional authority to commute demise sentences to life.”

Citing knowledge from the Demise Penalty Info Heart, Bentley and Siegelman famous that one out of almost each eight people within the U.S. sentenced to be executed has been exonerated. “Which means now we have been getting it unsuitable about 12 % of the time,” they wrote, stating that, if utilized to the 167 individuals in Alabama at present sentenced to demise, “as many as 20 may have been wrongfully charged and convicted.”

A number of of the individuals who at present sit on demise row in Alabama had been convicted utilizing non-unanimous juries — which means {that a} set of jurors didn’t attain a unanimous determination on whether or not to condemn an individual to demise however state legislation, on the time, allowed a decide to situation a demise sentence regardless. In 2020, the Supreme Courtroom dominated that non-unanimous demise penalty selections had been unconstitutional underneath sure circumstances, however didn’t overturn the sentences of people that had already been ordered to be executed underneath these circumstances. (The Excessive Courtroom’s determination additionally allowed for non-unanimous rulings in sure instances, resulting in Florida reinstating the use of non-unanimous juries earlier this year.)

The state of Alabama is ready to kill 115 individuals convicted of capital crimes though they had been sentenced by way of non-unanimous juries, Bentley and Siegelman identified.

“Alabama was additionally the final state to ban judicial overrides, a observe whereby judges had been in a position to overrule jury verdicts of life with out parole and order demise,” they said. The observe of judicial overrides within the state was clearly corrupt — judges overruled juries in 30 % of instances the place the demise penalty was an possibility throughout reelection years, versus simply 7 % of instances the place the demise penalty was an possibility in different years.

Thirty-one Alabamans are nonetheless scheduled to be executed after being sentenced underneath judicial overrides, regardless of the observe being outlawed in 2017, the 2 former governors mentioned.

The 2 additionally acknowledged that the demise penalty is inherently racist in software. Misconduct by prosecutors — for instance, withholding exculpatory proof from the protection — “most often includes Black defendants,” Bentley and Siegelman wrote.

“As governors, we had the facility to commute the sentences of all these on Alabama’s demise row to life in jail,” Bentley and Sigelman concluded in their op-ed. “We now not have that constitutional energy, however we really feel that cautious consideration requires commuting the sentences of the 146 prisoners who had been sentenced by non-unanimous juries or judicial override, and that an impartial evaluation unit needs to be established to look at all capital homicide convictions.”

Whereas the 2 former Alabama governors argued in favor of curbing the demise penalty by way of sentencing reforms and commuting many of the sentences for these already sentenced to demise within the state, their calls don’t go far sufficient, a number of authorized consultants have mentioned.

The worldwide neighborhood has demanded that the U.S. pursue full abolition of the demise penalty for years. In late 2022, the United Nations condemned the U.S. and different nations for persevering with to implement the demise penalty in various states all through the nation, voting in December by a rely of 125 nations in favor (and solely 37 opposed) to position a worldwide moratorium on the observe.

“As a rustic, we satisfaction ourselves on a dedication to human rights and the dedication to the dignity of all people,” Robert Dunham, government director of Demise Penalty Info Heart (DPIC), instructed Newsweek on the time. “To be aligned with the actions of” different international locations that deny human rights and nonetheless execute individuals “actively repudiates these values.”

In 2021, Legal professional Normal Merrick Garland positioned a moratorium on all executions deliberate on the federal stage. However that motion didn’t halt executions on the state stage, and doesn’t completely cease the demise penalty from being resumed someday sooner or later.

Throughout his 2020 presidential marketing campaign, President Joe Biden vowed to place an finish to the demise penalty as soon as and for all. However to this point, he’s taken no motion to take action.
“Joe Biden ran for president as an abolitionist,” Austin Sarat, a demise penalty professional at Amherst School, wrote final yr. “It’s time for him to manipulate as an abolitionist.”