Advocates hold rally for bill allowing resentencing for some Alabama death row inmates

Supporters of a bill that would make retroactive a 2017 ban on judicial override in death penalty cases walk from the Alabama Statehouse to the Alabama State Capitol on Thursday, March 21, 2024 to deliver a petition to Gov. Kay Ivey asking her to grant clemency to Alabama death row inmate Robin Myers. (Ralph Chapoco/Alabama Reflector)

Criminal justice reform groups hosted a rally Thursday at the Alabama Statehouse urging lawmakers to pass a bill that could resentence more than 30 people on Alabama’s death row to life without parole.

HB 27, sponsored by Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, would retroactively apply a 2017 law that ended judge’s abilities to override a jury’s sentencing recommendations in capital murder cases.

“I had the honor of carrying legislation several years ago that ultimately ended judicial override in Alabama,” England said at the rally.

Before 2017, jury verdicts in capital cases amounted to recommendations that judges had to consider. That 2017 legislation, sponsored by Rep. Dick Brewbaker, R-Pike Road, passed through the Legislature but didn’t include the provisions in a similar bill sponsored by England, which would have required a jury to be unanimous in imposing a death sentence.

“As this process has been known to do, it whittles away some of the edges and we end up with legislation that we didn’t want the perfect to be the enemy of the good,” England said.

There are 33 people currently on Alabama’s death row who were sentenced to death by a judge even though a jury had recommended they be sentenced to life in prison, according to Alison Mollman, senior legal counsel of ACLU of Alabama.

For the next several years since, England and criminal justice reform groups have been pushing to reintroduce the provisions from England’s 2017 bill.

The same bill received consideration in the House Judiciary Committee during last year’s session, receiving a public hearing, but didn’t go any further.

HB 27 would allow people to be resentenced if the judge levied a penalty different from what the jury recommended.

While the purpose of the rally was to highlight the proposed legislation, advocates at the rally focused on those who remain on death row because of judicial override, such as Robin “Rocky” Myers.

Myers was convicted in 1994 for the 1991 stabbing death of Ludie Mae Tucker in Decatur.  According to al.com, there was no physical evidence that could link a perpetrator to the crime. There is also evidence that Myers is intellectually disabled.

A jury convicted Myers of Tucker’s death and sentenced him to life without parole. The judge in the case, however, sentenced him to death.

During his appeals process, his attorney abandoned him in 2003 and allowed a deadline to lapse, effectively ending his right to an appeal and with it, the chance to return to court. He is currently awaiting execution.

His final chance rests with receiving clemency from Gov. Kay Ivey or by having HB 27 passed into law.

“I don’t think I could be in there for as long as he has been in there and still have the mindset that he has,” said LeAndrew Hood, Myers’ son, who attended Thursday’s rally.”He told me he still sees the light at the end of the tunnel. He has been there for a while. I probably would have given up by now.”

The rally was set against the backdrop of the Jan. 25 execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith with nitrogen gas. Smith, who was sentenced to death for the 1988 murder-for-hire of Elizabeth Sennett, was originally sentenced to life without parole. A judge imposed the death sentence. Media witnesses said Smith gasped and convulsed during the execution.

“Eleven people on the jury said that he should still be here today,” Deanna Smith, Kenneth Eugene Smith’s widow, said at the rally. “One judge was all it took to override that decision. One person decided that was not good enough and decided to take it into his own hands.”

England acknowledged criminal justice reform efforts face long odds in the current session.

“We have to be honest; we have to speak from the heart here, these have been some tough weeks in the Alabama Legislature,” England said. “We have passed some absolute trash legislation. Bad bills. But there are times in our history when an idea whose time has come crosses that threshold, and becomes the law. I think, considering where we are, there is no time like the present to pass this bill.”

For some at the rally, there was a sense of urgency.

“We have all made choices that we are not proud of, and we have likely hurt the people around us,” said TJ Riggs, Alabama state death penalty abolition coordinator for Amnesty International USA. “But our most damaging decisions do not define us. We are not the sum or our worst moments, and our character is not marked by the pain we have caused others.”

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