Alabama Legislature Votes to End Judicial Override

The Alabama leg­is­la­ture has approved and sent to the Governor a bill that would bring to an end the prac­tice of per­mit­ting tri­al judges to impose death sen­tences over a cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing jury’s rec­om­men­da­tion that the defen­dant be sen­tenced to life. Alabama is the only state in the U.S. that cur­rent­ly per­mits judi­cial over­ride. The leg­is­la­ture act­ed in response to mount­ing court chal­lenges to Alabama’s death penalty statute. 

On April 4, the state House of Representatives vot­ed 78 – 19 to pass a bill pro­hibit­ing tri­al judges from over­rid­ing the sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tions of juries in death penal­ty cas­es. Governor Robert Bentley has indi­cat­ed that he intends to sign the legislation. 

Two ver­sions of the pro­pos­al had advanced in the state leg­is­la­ture. A bill spon­sored by Sen. Dick Brewbaker (R‑Montgomery) that would elim­i­nate judi­cial over­ride but retain Alabama’s prac­tice of allow­ing death sen­tences if ten or more jurors vot­ed for death, passed the Senate 30 – 1 on February 23. A House bill by Rep. Chris England (D‑Tuscaloosa) that would have abol­ished judi­cial over­ride and required a unan­i­mous jury vote for death had passed the House Judiciary Committee on February 16. Rep. England agreed to sub­sti­tute the Senate ver­sion of the bill, which then over­whelm­ing­ly passed the House. 

The bill ​“places the death penal­ty back in the prop­er per­spec­tive,” England said. ​“It puts it … where in my opin­ion the Constitution intends it to be: in the hands of juries.” Although Alabama is no longer an out­lier on judi­cial over­ride, it remains the only state in the coun­try to per­mit a death sen­tence to be imposed based upon a non-unan­i­mous jury vote. 

According to research by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), judi­cial over­ride has his­tor­i­cal­ly been employed to impose death sen­tences when a jury rec­om­mend­ed life, rather than as a safe­guard against unjust jury votes for death. In 101 of the 112 cas­es in which Alabama judges have over­ri­den cap­i­tal jury sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tions, they have imposed the death penal­ty over a jury rec­om­men­da­tion of life. The EJI study also found that the use of judi­cial over­ride has been influ­enced by polit­i­cal con­cerns, with sen­tenc­ing over­rides dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly ris­ing in elec­tion years. Bryan Stevenson, founder of EJI, said, ​“Override under­mines the role of jurors, who some­times delib­er­ate for hours to make the right deci­sions in these cas­es on behalf of the com­mu­ni­ty. Alabama has had one of the high­est death-sen­tenc­ing rates in the coun­try large­ly because we add to death row so many peo­ple juries do not believe should be executed.”