Although death sen­tences have declined around the coun­try, they have dra­mat­i­cal­ly increased in Jefferson County, Alabama, since 1993 when state leg­is­la­tors expand­ed the death penal­ty to include dri­ve-by shoot­ings. Jefferson County, which includes Birmingham, account­ed for near­ly 50% of the state’s death sen­tences in 2005 and 2006.

According to fed­er­al data, Alabama is 23rd in pop­u­la­tion nation­al­ly but has the coun­try’s sixth largest death row and is one of the lead­ing states in the nation in per capi­ta death sen­tences. ​“There is no ques­tion in my mind, Alabama has one of the most expan­sive death penal­ty statutes in the coun­try.… Alabama has 1/​2 the pop­u­la­tion of Georgia, but rou­tine­ly sen­tences 4 times more peo­ple to death,” not­ed Bryan Stevenson (pic­tured), exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative. In Alabama, it only takes 10 jurors to rec­om­mend a death sen­tence. The state also allows judges to over­ride juries when the major­i­ty calls for a less­er sen­tence, a fact that Stevenson said accounts for 20 – 25% of the death sen­tences in the state. 

(Birmingham News, April 3, 2006). 

See Arbitrariness and Sentencing.

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