Corrections Personnel, Victims’ Families, Jurors Urge Clemency for Tennessee Death-Row ​“Lifesaver”

Saying that Nicholas Sutton ​“has gone from a life-tak­er to a life-saver,” lawyers for the Tennessee death-row pris­on­er filed an appli­ca­tion for clemen­cy with Governor Bill Lee on January 14, 2020. The clemen­cy appli­ca­tion, which requests that Lee com­mute Sutton’s sen­tence to life with­out parole, con­tained affi­davits of sup­port from sev­en Tennessee cor­rec­tion­al offi­cials, mem­bers of the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies, and five of the jurors in the case.

Sutton cur­rent­ly faces a February 20, 2020 exe­cu­tion date for a mur­der com­mit­ted in his ear­ly twen­ties while he was in prison on anoth­er murder charge.

The clemen­cy appli­ca­tion pro­vides details from prison offi­cials of how Sutton has matured and changed dur­ing his time on death row and how he has repeat­ed­ly inter­vened in dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions to pro­tect cor­rec­tions per­son­nel and oth­er pris­on­ers. ​“Five Tennesseans, includ­ing three prison staff mem­bers, owe their lives to him,” the peti­tion said. The peti­tion backs up that claim with state­ments from two cor­rec­tions offi­cers who say that Sutton saved their lives, and an ear­li­er state­ment by a since-deceased Sheriff’s Deputy describ­ing how Sutton pro­tect­ed him from an attack by another prisoner. 

An affi­davit from for­mer cor­rec­tions offi­cer Tony Eden detailed an inci­dent in which five armed pris­on­ers attacked him and attempt­ed to take him hostage dur­ing a 1985 prison riot. ​“I owe my life to Nick Sutton,” he said. ​“Nick and anoth­er inmate con­front­ed them, phys­i­cal­ly removed me from the sit­u­a­tion and escort­ed me to the safe­ty of the trap gate in anoth­er build­ing…. Nick risked his safe­ty and well-being in order to save me from possible death.”

Officer Cheryl Donaldson pro­vid­ed an account of an inci­dent in 1994 in which Sutton came to her aid after she had sus­tained a head injury in a fall. Serving as a prison unit man­ag­er at the time, she described lying on the prison floor, dazed, with her keys and radio sprawled out in the cor­ri­dor. She said she feared that a pris­on­er might assault her or cause a secu­ri­ty breach, but instead, “[Nick] sprang into action, helped me to my feet, retrieved my keys and radio, and alert­ed staff to come to my assis­tance.” That response, she said, ​“was typ­i­cal of Nick, who always puts oth­ers before him­self and is will­ing to help any­one in need.”

The clemen­cy peti­tion also offered a state­ment from the late Howard Ferrell, for­mer­ly a Hamblen County Sheriff’s Deputy, who described Sutton tack­ling a pris­on­er who was about to attack the deputy. “[Nick] prob­a­bly could have saved my life,” Ferrell said.

Officer Eden strong­ly urged Governor Lee to grant Sutton’s request for clemen­cy. ​“Nick Sutton is a prime exam­ple of a per­son­’s abil­i­ty to change and that those con­vict­ed of mur­der can be reha­bil­i­tat­ed,” Eden wrote. ​“If Nick Sutton was released tomor­row, I would wel­come him into my home and invite him to be my neigh­bor.” Eden said Sutton ​“pos­es no dan­ger to the prison staff or oth­er inmates, and his pres­ence in gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion would be an asset to every­one at the prison.” Calling the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Sutton’s exe­cu­tion ​“a grave injus­tice,” Eden said ​“I strong­ly sup­port Nick Sutton receiv­ing a life sentence.”

Five jurors who served at Sutton’s tri­al and vot­ed to sen­tence him to death now say they sup­port com­mut­ing his sen­tence to life in prison. His clemen­cy plea also includes state­ments of sup­port from fam­i­ly mem­bers of his victims.

Rosemary (Estep) Hall, the old­est daugh­ter of Carl Estep, whom Sutton killed in prison, said she speaks for her whole fam­i­ly in sup­port­ing clemen­cy. Estep, she said, was unpre­dictably vio­lent. ​“It breaks my heart that Mr. Sutton has lost so much of his life on death row for killing my father,” she said.

Lowell Sutton, Nick’s cousin and the nephew of mur­der vic­tim Dorothy Sutton, said, ​“although the loss of my aunt was very hard on our fam­i­ly, I for­give Nick, our fam­i­ly for­gives Nick, and we do not want him to be exe­cut­ed.… Nick’s exe­cu­tion will only cause more pain and hurt for our fam­i­ly; please spare us that.” The nephew and great-niece of Charles Almon also joined the peti­tion. Charles Maynard, who was named for his uncle, Charles Almon, said he for­gives Sutton and ​“tak[ing] anoth­er life does noth­ing to right this wrong.” Maynard’s daugh­ter, Anna Lee, agreed, ask­ing that Tennessee not add ​“vio­lence on top of violence.”

The clemen­cy peti­tion also describes some of the defects in the legal process that may have con­tributed to his death sen­tence, but for which he could not obtain relief in the courts. They note that Sutton appeared before the jury in shack­les dur­ing his tri­al, a prac­tice that the Supreme Court lat­er said ​“under­mines the pre­sump­tion of inno­cence and the relat­ed fair­ness of the [tri­al].” His tri­al lawyers failed to present evi­dence of extreme abuse and neglect that Sutton expe­ri­enced through­out his child­hood. The peti­tion describes how Nick Sutton was aban­doned by his moth­er dur­ing infan­cy and how his father, Pete Sutton’s chron­ic drug and alco­hol use led to reg­u­lar ver­bal and physical abuse.

Nick Sutton’s cousin, Lowell Sutton, described Nick’s upbring­ing as a ​“liv­ing hell.” Lowell described one inci­dent in which Pete Sutton ​“beat Nick so bad­ly that he broke his arm and anoth­er time where Pete flew into a rage and took Nick and [Nick’s grand­moth­er] hostage at gun­point, result­ing in an armed stand-off with the police. Pete’s mis­treat­ment of Nick broke my heart,” Lowell said. Pete active­ly encour­aged Nick to use drugs, and by age 12, Nick was reg­u­lar­ly using drugs with his father.

Dr. Barry Crown, a foren­sic neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist who exam­ined Nick Sutton said that the com­bi­na­tion of trau­ma and sub­stance abuse caused devel­op­men­tal impair­ments to Sutton’s rea­son­ing and judg­ment. Dr. Crown not­ed that Sutton had no inci­dents of vio­lence after reach­ing brain maturity.

Sutton’s lawyers argue that “[t]he sup­port of his vic­tims’ fam­i­lies, cor­rec­tion staff, jurors, and those whose lives he has saved attest that a life sen­tence meets the imper­a­tives of jus­tice and mer­cy.” Governor Lee, they say, should ​“exer­cise the pow­er of clemen­cy in the vein for which it was designed — to com­mute the death sen­tence of a man who has under­gone per­son­al trans­for­ma­tion, a man who is worth far more to our soci­ety and prison sys­tem alive than dead.”