Death Row denial

The first Mobile County woman ever sent to Alabama’s Death Row won’t have her case reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Heather Leavell-Keaton’s lawyers previously argued in the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals that she didn’t have the chance to address the court before she was sentenced back in 2015. That didn’t work out, and the latest effort was to argue that in that previous appeals case that mitigating evidence wasn’t properly weighed when she was resentenced.

But the Supreme Court passed on hearing the case, so Leavell-Keaton remains at Julia Tutwiler Prison in Wetumpka, awaiting execution.

She was sentenced after the court found that she and her boyfriend tortured and killed his two children in 2010.

The Year of Hurts

He’s originally from Texas and he finished his college career in Oklahoma, but Jalen Hurts is the Alabama Sports Writers Association’s Pro Athlete of the Year.

That speaks to his becoming a household name in the state before transferring from the University of Alabama to the University of Oklahoma, and just how awesome his year has been.

Hurts was the runner-up for the NFL MVP Award. He took the Philadelphia Eagles to Super Bowl LVII. And the ink is now drying on his five-year contract extension worth $255 million.

One more day

You know we can’t get away without running down some of what might happen on Goat Hill today.

It’s the final day of the Alabama legislative session, and there are a number of measures that could get final approval from lawmakers, based on some AL.com and Alabama Daily News reports.

Yesterday we mentioned the bill that would make it illegal in most cases to deliver or fill out an absentee ballot for someone else. Today we might see movement on:

• A measure that would restrict access to vaping products for those under 21.
• A second effort to make it illegal to be in contact with your cell phone when you’re driving.
• A bill that could come up in the Senate that would allow certain students to use education savings accounts on private school.

Fake law

Did you play cops and robbers as a child? And has anyone ever done a study on how life turned out for the kids who always chose to be the robbers?

I do know this: Once we reach a certain age, the law doesn’t want us to pretend to be cops anymore.

AL.com’s William Thornton reports that a man is in the Limestone County Detention Center after authorities say he impersonated a law officer in Limestone, Madison and Jackson counties in Alabama and Lincoln County in Tennessee.

Authorities say the 18-year-old applied to be a corrections officer last week, stole blue lights from a Madison County Career Tech law enforcement vehicle and put the blue lights in his own 2008 Toyota Solara.

He then, according to the report, started pulling people over.

Authorities said that he confessed during an interview.

More Alabama news

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