A new report issued by the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project found that Alabama’s death penal­ty fails to meet fun­da­men­tal ABA stan­dards of fair­ness and accu­ra­cy. An eight-mem­ber assess­ment team assem­bled in Alabama by the ABA was so trou­bled by its find­ings that it called for a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in the state. The team urged law­mak­ers to take action to ensure effec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion at every stage of the cap­i­tal process, to pro­tect inno­cent peo­ple on death row by pro­vid­ing a clear method of obtain­ing post-con­vic­tion DNA test­ing, to pro­tect the men­tal­ly retard­ed from exe­cu­tion, and to elim­i­nate ​“judge over­ride” of juries’ sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tions in death penal­ty cas­es. In addi­tion, the report calls on the state to reserve the death penal­ty for the ​“worst of the worst,” and to col­lect the data nec­es­sary to ful­ly assess Alabama’s death penal­ty sys­tem.

Among the team’s key findings were: 

  • Alabama’s indi­gent defense sys­tem is fail­ing and is, at best, described as a ​“very frag­ment­ed, mixed, and uneven sys­tem that lacks lev­el over­sight and stan­dards… and does not pro­vide uni­form, qual­i­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the major­i­ty of indi­gent defen­dants in the state.”
  • Alabama stands almost alone in fail­ing to guar­an­tee coun­sel to indi­gent defen­dants sen­tenced to death in post-conviction proceedings. 
  • Alabama has not adopt­ed a law set­ting out stan­dards and pro­ce­dures for deter­min­ing which indi­vid­u­als have men­tal retar­da­tion and are there­fore inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. This presents a con­tin­u­ing risk that Alabama may exe­cute a men­tal­ly retard­ed offend­er, despite the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­hi­bi­tion against it.
  • Alabama has failed to pass leg­is­la­tion pro­vid­ing con­vict­ed offend­ers a clear method for obtain­ing post-con­vic­tion DNA test­ing, mak­ing it near­ly impos­si­ble for indi­vid­u­als fil­ing new­ly dis­cov­ered evi­dence claims to obtain fur­ther DNA test­ing and have their claims heard.
  • When it con­ducts pro­por­tion­al­i­ty review, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals looks only to cas­es where the death penal­ty was imposed under sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances, rather than also con­sid­er­ing cas­es in which the death penal­ty was sought but not imposed and cas­es in which the death penal­ty could have been sought but was not. This type of review is inher­ent­ly lim­it­ed and inca­pable of uncov­er­ing poten­tial­ly serious disparities.
  • Alabama courts have not sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly reviewed cas­es involv­ing the aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stance that a crime was ​“espe­cial­ly heinous, atro­cious, or cru­el com­pared to oth­er cap­i­tal offens­es.” Failure to review these cas­es has result­ed in a pro­vi­sion that pros­e­cu­tors can view as a ​“catch-all” pro­vi­sion and one that is not sub­ject to any rational limitation.
  • Research has found that Alabama cap­i­tal jurors do not under­stand their role and respon­si­bil­i­ties when decid­ing whether to impose a death sen­tence. Over 54% of cap­i­tal jurors inter­viewed did not under­stand that any evi­dence could be con­sid­ered in mit­i­ga­tion, over 53% believed that the defense had to prove mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors beyond a rea­son­able doubt, and over 55% did not under­stand that they could con­sid­er any fac­tor in mit­i­ga­tion regard­less of whether oth­er jurors agreed.
The Alabama death penal­ty assess­ment is the sec­ond in a series of state reviews being spon­sored by the ABA. The eight-mem­ber pan­el includ­ed attor­neys, law pro­fes­sors, and a state sen­a­tor.

(Alabama ABA Death Penalty Assessment Report, June 2006). Read the Executive Summary. Read the Full Report. See Studies.

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