Just two days after Tennessee’s first elec­tro­cu­tion in near­ly 50 years, Governor Phil Bredesen (pic­tured) com­mut­ed the death sen­tence of Michael Joe Boyd to life in prison with­out parole. The Governor called the rep­re­sen­ta­tion Boyd received dur­ing his appeals ​“gross­ly inad­e­quate,” adding that Boyd’s claims were nev­er com­pre­hen­sive­ly reviewed because his appel­late attor­ney — Dan Seward — failed to pro­vide evi­dence to sup­port Boyd’s ini­tial claim that he was poor­ly rep­re­sent­ed dur­ing his tri­al. Bredesen observed, ​“I’ve always tak­en the posi­tion that I’m not try­ing to be the 13th juror; I’m try­ing to be a back­stop. The judi­cial sys­tem just kind of broke down.” Boyd’s cur­rent attor­ney, Robert Hutton, said that Boyd’s clemen­cy request to Bredesen was one of the last legal avenues avail­able before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion on October 24.

Boyd, now known as Mika’eel Abdullah Abdus-Samad in prison, has been on death row since 1988. He was con­vict­ed of shoot­ing William Price in 1986. Boyd claims the shoot­ing was acci­den­tal, but he was con­vict­ed of felony mur­der in per­pe­tra­tion of a rob­bery. The Tennessee Supreme Court upheld Boyd’s death sen­tence in 1998, when the jus­tices dis­missed his claim that pros­e­cu­tors improp­er­ly cit­ed the mur­der itself as an aggra­vat­ing fac­tor to sup­port their call for the death penal­ty.

​“He is deeply grate­ful, thank­ful and deeply remorse­ful about his actions in his past. He’s try­ing to spend the rest of his life mak­ing a pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion to soci­ety,” Hutton said of Boyd.
(Associated Press, September 14, 2007). See Clemency.

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