Alabama state senators voted 30-1 on Thursday to end the practice of allowing judges to impose the death penalty in cases even after juries vote for a life sentence.
The bill now moves to the Alabama House, which is already considering a similar measure.
The effort to end judicial overrides in Alabama is a rare bipartisan one. The sponsor of the Senate bill is a Republican, and the sponsor of the House bill is a Democrat.
Alabama is the last state in the nation to allow judicial overrides after Florida and Delaware changed their policies last year. Should the measure pass, it would not apply retroactively to death penalties already imposed.
Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1983, there have been 57 executions in Alabama. According to an AL.com/Marshall Project review of each case, 29 involved non-unanimous jury votes, ranging from 11 to 1 for death to 11 to 1 for life.
The last inmate executed in Alabama was given a death sentence by a judge even though a jury recommended life in prison without parole.
“We may have been somehow threading the needle of the constitutionality of this, but at the end of the day it is morally wrong to allow this practice to continue in our state,” Sen. Cam Ward, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said during debate over the measure.
Ronald Bert Smith Jr. was the last person executed in Alabama in January 2016. He was convicted of capital murder in 1994 for fatally shooting a store clerk.
A jury voted 7-5 to recommend him to life in prison, but a judge overrode that recommendation and sentenced Smith to death.
