Kay Ivey haunted by ghosts and governors of Alabama death penalty
“It just doesn’t make any sense that we would execute people under a process that’s currently illegal in Alabama.” – Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman
Not to get all Charles Dickens on y’all, but what we got here in Alabama with death penalty politics has turned into kind of an old school “Ghost of Christmas Past” literary drama. The good news is it’s a bipartisan old school literary drama, featuring former Republican Gov. Robert Bentley and former Democrat Gov. Don Siegelman as the ghosts.
Bentley and Siegelman voiced their regrets about death penalty decisions in a joint op-ed for The Washington Post this week. We can only hope Gov. Grim Reaper Kay Ivey is paying attention.
Related: Death penalty ‘needs killing:’ Alabama’s next execution should be its last – al.com
Related: Alabama Death Row inmate Toforest Johnson’s case to be focus of Birmingham event – al.com
Excerpts from my AL.com colleague Ivana Hrynkiw’s report:
Two former governors of Alabama from opposite sides of the political aisle published an opinion piece in The Washington Post calling for the state to put an end to executing people who were sent to death row by a split jury, and for Alabama to commute the sentences of 146 death row inmates.
Data from the Alabama Department of Corrections shows there are currently 167 people on Alabama Death Row—the greatest use of death row in the nation when adjusted for population. For every 100,000 Alabamians, there are 3.3 people on death row – by far the highest rate in the United States.
“As far as the two of us are concerned, that is at least 146 people too many,” states the op-ed published in The Washington Post.
Specifically, the piece calls for an end to executing people who were sent to death row either by a non unanimous jury, or by a judge who overturned a jury’s sentence for life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Related: Death penalty ‘needs killing:’ Alabama’s next execution should be its last – al.com
Under current Alabama law, a jury can vote 10-2 and still impose a death sentence. In 2017, Gov. Kay Ivey signed into law that juries, not judges, have the final say on whether to impose the death penalty in capital murder cases. It wasn’t retroactive, meaning people are still sitting on death row who were sent there against a jury’s recommendation.
Siegelman told AL.com Wednesday about judicial override, “It just doesn’t make any sense that we would execute people under a process that’s currently illegal in Alabama.”
The op-ed continued, “As former Alabama governors, we have come over time to see the flaws in our nation’s justice system and to view the state’s death penalty laws in particular as legally and morally troubling. We both presided over executions while in office, but if we had known then what we know now about prosecutorial misconduct, we would have exercised our constitutional authority to commute death sentences to life.”
The governors cite data from the Death Penalty Information Center that, since 1976, one person on death row nationwide has been exonerated for every 8.3 executions. “That means we have been getting it wrong about 12 percent of the time. If we apply those statistics to the 167 people on Alabama’s death row, it means that as many as 20 could have been wrongfully charged and convicted,” continued the piece.
The governors mention several men awaiting execution, including Toforest Johnson of Birmingham and Rocky Myers of Decatur. Johnson and Myers have long maintained their innocence.
Despite no physical evidence tying him to the crime, contradictory witnesses and a divided jury, Myers was found guilty in a fatal stabbing in Decatur three decades ago Nine jurors recommended he be sentenced to life in prison, while just three voted for death. But, a judge overruled the jury and sentenced him to die.
“One of us, Don Siegelman, is personally haunted by the case of Freddie Wright, whose execution he could have commuted, but did not, in 2000. Twenty-three years later, Siegelman believes Wright was wrongfully charged, prosecuted and convicted for a murder he most likely did not commit,” said the op-ed.
The former governor said that’s the case that haunts him of the eight that happened under his reign as governor.
Read all of Ivana Hrynkiw’s report here
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JD Crowe is the cartoonist for Alabama Media Group and AL.com. He won the RFK Human Rights Award for Editorial Cartoons in 2020. In 2018, he was awarded the Rex Babin Memorial Award for local and state cartoons by the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Follow JD on Facebook, Twitter @Crowejam and Instagram @JDCrowepix.
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