Although Juries Sentenced 25 People to Life in Prison, Alabama Authorities Still Have Scheduled to Murder Them ["the death penalty"]

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Alabama lawmakers recognized nearly a decade ago that Alabama’s unique practice of allowing an elected trial judge to reject a jury verdict of life and impose the death penalty was wrong.

The state legislature abolished judicial override in 2017. When Governor Kay Ivey signed the bill into law, the “message was unambiguous: sentencing decisions in death penalty cases belong to juries, not to judges,” according to former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Drayton Nabers Jr.

Roy S. Moore, another former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court pointed out that it is wrong for people to remain on death row even though their juries sentenced them to life imprisonment without parole. “If it was wrong in 2017 for a trial judge to overturn a jury recommendation of life without parole,” Justice Moore wrote, “it is wrong to condemn…individuals who were denied that right prior to 2017.”

Even though the state has abolished the practice of judicial override and recognized that jury verdicts should be respected, there are still 25 people facing execution in Alabama whose juries voted for life, including four whose juries unanimously rejected the death penalty as punishment. [MORE]