This is a guest opinion column

Regardless of our political differences, with Easter and the crucifixion of Jesus remembered today, I hope we can agree on the sanctitBly of life, the rule of law and that our justice system should be fair, constitutional, lawful and not based on race.

Unfortunately, that’s not what’s happening.

Alabama has 167 people on death row, 30 sentenced by a process called “judicial override”, where a judge overrode a jury’s decision of life in prison without parole and ordered the person executed.

Secondly, Alabama has 115 people sentenced to death by “non-unanimous juries.” A third method of ordering death is by a unanimous jury recommendation.

In Ramos v. Louisiana, 140 S. Ct. 1390 (2020), the Supreme Court ruled that it takes a unanimous verdict to convict someone of a capital crime warranting death. The Court highlighted the racist underpinnings of non-unanimous verdicts, linking it to a Jim Crow practice dating from the 1870’s. White folks back then apparently didn’t have a problem with unanimous jury verdicts until freed slaves were made citizens and a single Black juror could prevent them from sentencing a Black man to death.

Even though the 2020 Supreme Court ruling didn’t explicitly extend to the sentencing phase, all states ended the practice.

Except for one. Alabama.

Alabama has 115 people, 54 of whom are Black, all sentenced to death by this legal relic of Jim Crow.

On January 25th, 2024, Alabama executed Kenneth Eugene Smith who was sentenced to death not by a jury but by a judge who overrode his jury. His jury had voted 11 to 1 for life in prison.

On March 23rd of 2025, Governor Ivey acted courageously, showed mercy, and commuted the death sentence of Rocky Myers. His jury had voted 9 to 3 for life. He was on death row because his trial judge overrode the jury and ordered Rocky executed.Having been Alabama’s Governor from 1999-2003, and having not granted commutation to those subsequently executed, I praise Governor Ivey for her courage, and wisdom. She stood on solid legal footing.

In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court in Hurst v. Florida, 136 S. Ct. 616, ruled against judicial overrides. The Court in Hurst said a jury, not a judge, must find each fact necessary to impose death.

After Hurst, all states abandoned judicial overrides. Alabama was the last state to outlaw the practice.

In 2017, Governor Ivey signed legislation banning judicial overrides in Alabama.Alabama’s Attorney General in response to Governor Ivey’s commutation of Rocky Myers (a Black man) stated he was “astonished…and his teams deeply saddened…”

However, Governor Ivey was supported not only by the law but also by the facts.

Rocky Myers wasn’t physically connected to the murder scene, was convicted based on the testimony of a witness who recanted his testimony and, perhaps more importantly, our Constitution gives us all the right to trial by jury. Rocky’s jury had voted 9 to 1 for life not death.But while Alabama has banned future death sentences by judicial overrides, 30 people remain on death row based on this outlawed and unconstitutional practice.

Judicial overrides ordering death are indefensible, not only because they are unconstitutional and unlawful, but also because, as applied, Blacks are disproportionately impacted.

Of the 30 people on Alabama’s death row sentenced by judicial overrides, 19 or 63.33% are Black—twice the rate of whites and nearly four times their presence in Alabama’s population.

Even more disturbing, Alabama’s Equal Justice Initiative found that “while judicial overrides accounted for 7 percent of death sentences in one nonelection year, in the following year, when Alabama judges ran for election, judicial overrides rose to 30 percent.”

Of the 19 Blacks currently on death row due to judicial override, all judges were either running for reelection or did run in the next election. All but one was a white judge.

Moreover, other statistics raise serious questions as to how death penalty laws are applied.

For example, national statistics implicate racism in prosecutorial discretion as to who is charged for capital murder. A report by the Death Penalty Information Center (“DPIC”), shows that since 1976, nationwide, one person on death row has been exonerated for every 8.3 executed. That’s an error rate of about 12%. The facts are more alarming. Exonerations, the DPIC found, are “overwhelmingly the product of police or prosecutorial misconduct or the presentation of knowingly false testimony.”

More astonishing is that of those exonerated for government misconduct 87% are Black.

Regardless of one’s view on the death penalty, whether you are for it or not, we should all agree, the process should be moral and constitutional and not be based on racist relics like non-unanimous juries and judicial overrides.

That’s not the case in Alabama.

Don Siegelman served as Governor of Alabama from 1999 to 2003, as Lt. Governor from 1995 to 1999, as Attorney General from 1987 to 1991, and Secretary of State from 1979 to 1987.