Alabama

History of the Death Penalty

Alabama’s first exe­cu­tion was car­ried out in 1812. From 1812 to 1927, the pri­ma­ry method of exe­cu­tion was hang­ing. In 1927, the elec­tric chair, known as ​“Yellow Mama,” was intro­duced. Today, the pri­ma­ry method is lethal injec­tion, although inmates con­vict­ed pri­or to 2002 can choose to be exe­cut­ed by elec­tro­cu­tion or lethal injection.

Timeline

1812 – First known exe­cu­tion in Alabama, Eli Norman hung for murder.

1927 – Alabama replaces hang­ing with elec­tro­cu­tion as its method of execution.

1972 – The Supreme Court strikes down the death penal­ty in Furman v. Georgia.

1976 – Alabama pass­es a law rein­stat­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The Supreme Court soon after rein­states the death penal­ty when it upholds Georgia’s statute in Gregg v. Georgia.

1983 – John Evans III is the first per­son exe­cut­ed in Alabama after Gregg.

2002 – Alabama elec­tro­cutes Lynda Lyon Block, the last per­son to under­go that pun­ish­ment invol­un­tar­i­ly in the state. Alabama sub­se­quent­ly made lethal injec­tion its default exe­cu­tion method, but con­tin­ued to allow inmates to select electrocution.

2006 — Alabama judge impos­es the death penal­ty on Oscar Doster, despite a unan­i­mous jury vote for a life sentence.

2011 — Alabama exe­cutes Jason Williams using a secret com­bi­na­tion of ille­gal­ly pur­chased drugs after the DEA pre­vi­ous­ly seized Alabama’s ille­gal­ly obtained sup­ply of sodi­um thiopen­tal, one of three drugs used in lethal injection.

2012 — The Supreme Court holds that manda­to­ry life with­out parole sen­tences for chil­dren 17 or younger con­vict­ed of homi­cide is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in Miller v. Alabama and its com­pan­ion case, Jackson v. Hobbs.

2013 — The Alabama House of Representatives votes unan­i­mous­ly on a bill to posthu­mous­ly par­don the ​“Scottsboro Boys.” The nine black men were teenagers when they were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed for the rape of two white women in 1931 and held in prison for a col­lec­tive 130 years.

2016 — The Supreme Court orders Alabama to recon­sid­er its death penal­ty sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dure after vacat­ing Alabama’s deci­sion to uphold a death sen­tence for Bart Johnson. Mr. Johnson’s sen­tence was imposed by a tri­al judge after a 10 – 2 non-unan­i­mous jury vote, vio­lat­ing the Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Hurst v. Florida.

2018 — Alabama autho­rizes the use of nitro­gen gas as a method of execution.

2018 — Alabama botch­es the attempt­ed exe­cu­tion of Doyle Hamm. It took the exe­cu­tion team near­ly two and a half hours to insert an IV to admin­is­ter lethal injec­tion, punc­tur­ing Hamm in the blad­der and femoral artery, result­ing in severe bleeding.

2019 — A unan­i­mous deci­sion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit requires that Alabama reveal crit­i­cal com­po­nents of its high­ly secre­tive lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dure to the general public.

2022 — Alabama car­ries out the longest botched lethal-injec­tion exe­cu­tion in U.S. his­to­ry, tak­ing three hours to set an IV line in the exe­cu­tion of Joe James.

2022 — Governor Kay Ivey halts exe­cu­tions after a series of failed and botched exe­cu­tions, includ­ing that of Kenneth Smith, Joe James, and Alan Miller. Gov. Ivey calls for Alabama Department of Corrections to car­ry out inter­nal review of execution protocol.

2023 — The Alabama Supreme Court elim­i­nates auto­mat­ic plain error review for tri­al errors in death penal­ty cas­es. The court will no longer be required to read cap­i­tal case tran­scripts to see if there are any errors that may have adverse­ly impact­ed the rights of capital defendants.

Famous Cases

In 1931, nine black boys were charged with rap­ing two white girls. They were tried in Scottsboro, Alabama, and became known as the Scottsboro Boys. All-white juries sen­tenced eight of the boys to death. The cas­es were heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in Powell v. Alabama (1932), the land­mark case which guar­an­tees the right to coun­sel in a cap­i­tal tri­al. After numer­ous retri­als, only one of the boys was sen­tenced to death, but his sen­tence was lat­er com­mut­ed to life in prison.

Cornelius Singleton, an inmate with an IQ of 55, was exe­cut­ed November 20, 1992.

Darrell B. Grayson, an African-American man, was con­vict­ed by an all-white jury for the mur­der of a white woman. The Innocence Project sought DNA test­ing in Grayson’s case, say­ing that test­ing not avail­able at the time of his tri­al might prove him inno­cent. Requests for new test­ing were denied, and Grayson was exe­cut­ed on July 26, 2007.

Holly Wood was exe­cut­ed September 9, 2010 despite evi­dence that he was intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled, and there­fore exempt from exe­cu­tion. His lawyer did not present evi­dence of Wood’s low IQ dur­ing Wood’s orig­i­nal tri­al. A fed­er­al District Court over­turned Wood’s sen­tence, but the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the rul­ing from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit that Wood failed to show that the lawyers were constitutionally ineffective.

Walter Moody was exe­cut­ed April 19, 2018. At 83 years old, Moody was the old­est per­son and only octo­ge­nar­i­an put to death in the United States since exe­cu­tions resumed in 1977.

Dominique Ray was exe­cut­ed February 2, 2019 with­out his cho­sen reli­gious advi­sor present. Alabama’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col man­dat­ed that a prison chap­lain — and no oth­er reli­gious advis­er — be present in the exe­cu­tion cham­ber, but the state employed only Christian chap­lains. Ray, who was Muslim, request­ed that an imam be allowed in the exe­cu­tion cham­ber. In a con­tentious 5 – 4 deci­sion, the U.S. Supreme Court vacat­ed a fed­er­al appeals court stay of exe­cu­tion and per­mit­ted Alabama to car­ry out the execution.

Notable Exonerations

Walter McMillian was sen­tenced to death in 1988 despite the jury’s rec­om­men­da­tion for a life sen­tence. An inves­ti­ga­tion by 60 Minutes uncov­ered pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct and per­jury by wit­nessess. McMillan was released from prison in 1993.

Anthony Ray Hinton was exon­er­at­ed in 2015 after hav­ing spent 30 years on death row. He was sen­tenced to death by the court in the 1985 mur­ders of two fast-food restau­rant man­agers, after a 10 – 2 rec­om­men­da­tion of death by the jury. The pros­e­cu­tor (who was white) had a doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry of racial bias, and claimed he could tell Hinton (who is black) was guilty and ​“evil” just by look­ing at him. Hinton was arrest­ed after a vic­tim in a sim­i­lar crime erro­neous­ly iden­ti­fied him in a pho­to array, even though Hinton proved he was at work 15 miles away when that mur­der took place. The con­vic­tion was based in large part upon sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly invalid tes­ti­mo­ny of a state foren­sic exam­in­er that the bul­lets in the two mur­ders came from a gun that was found in Hinton’s house. In 2002, three lead­ing firearms exam­in­ers tes­ti­fied that the bul­lets used in the mur­ders could not be matched to Hinton’s gun, and may not have come from a sin­gle gun at all. For the next thir­teen years, Alabama nev­er­the­less con­tin­ued to oppose efforts to over­turn his con­vic­tion and death sentence.

Milestones in Abolition/​Reinstatement

Senator Hank Sanders has intro­duced a mora­to­ri­um bill for the past 10 years. Representative Merika Coleman has intro­duced a mora­to­ri­um bill for the past 5 years.

Other Interesting Facts

Until 2017, Alabama allowed the prac­tice of judi­cial over­ride, in which judges could over­ride a jury’s sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tion even when the jury had rec­om­mend­ed a life sen­tence. Alabama still allows a judge to impose a death sen­tence with­out a unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tion for death if at least 10 of 12 jurors rec­om­mend a death sentence.

From 1927 – 1976 there were 153 exe­cu­tions. Of those, 126 were African American, 27 were Caucasian. 3 were female.

Alabama is the only state whose anti-death penal­ty orga­ni­za­tion (Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty) was found­ed by death row inmates in 1989. The Chairman and Board are at Holman Prion on death row.

Resources

• American Bar Association Alabama Death Penalty Assessment Report
• Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty
• Equal Justice Initiative
• Deparment of Corrections
• Alabama Dept. of Corrections list of inmates cur­rent­ly on death row
• Prosecutors

Alabama Execution Totals Since 1976