A state trial court judge in Alabama on Thursday ruled that the state’s death penalty law is unconstitutional.
Jefferson County Circuit Judge Tracie Todd barred the death penalty in response to a hearing sought by capital murder defendants Benjamin Acton, Terrell McMullin, Stanley Chatman and Kenneth Billups.
In Alabama, at least 10 jurors must agree to impose the death penalty, but judges can override and impose the death penalty even if the jury recommends life without parole. According to Todd, the use of judicial override violates the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution.
“The Alabama capital sentencing scheme fails to provide special procedural safeguards to minimize the obvious influence of partisan politics or the potential for unlawful bias in the judiciary,” Todd said in her written ruling from the bench. “As a result, the death penalty in Alabama is being imposed in a ‘wholly arbitrary and capricious manner.'”
Todd told AL.com she expects her ruling will be appealed by prosecutors. If an appellate court goes on to uphold her ruling, then it would become a precedent and apply to cases statewide.
Emory Anthony, the attorney for Chatman, argued with the other defense attorneys that Alabama’s death sentencing scheme is the same as Florida’s, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled as unconstitutional in January.
Todd noted in her ruling that Alabama executes more defendants than states five times it size.
A recent study by the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Law and Justice at Harvard found that more than three-quarters of the death sentences imposed in Alabama in the past five years involved non-unanimous juries. Alabama, Delaware and Florida are the only states that allow a judge to impose the death penalty after the jury has not unanimously recommended death.
According the Death Penalty Information Center, the current death row population in Alabama is 196.
