On February 28, 2025, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey commuted the death sentence of Robin ‘Rocky’ Dion Myers to Life Without Parole (LWOP). Myers was convicted in the 1991 murder of Ludie Mae Tucker in Decatur, Alabama. His jury recommended that he be sentenced to LWOP, but the judge in his case overrode the jury’s recommendation and handed down a death sentence. The practice of judicial override was abolished in Alabama in 2017. In her statement, Gov. Ivey repeated her belief that “the death penalty is just punishment for society’s most serious crimes” but she also noted that in Mr. Myer’s case, she had “enough questions about [his] guilt that I cannot move forward with executing him.”
In support of her decision, Gov. Ivey noted that no evidence directly linking Mr. Myers to the scene of the crime had been found, and that eyewitnesses to the crime never identified Mr. Myers as the assailant. While unconvinced of his innocence, Gov. Ivey said she was also not convinced of his guilt. A former juror in the case, Mae Puckett, came forward in 2023 with her belief that Mr. Myers was not guilty: “They never placed him in the house that night … I know he is innocent.” This was only the second grant of clemency in a death penalty case in Alabama in the modern death penalty era. The last time anyone was granted clemency in Alabama was in 1999.
