IDEAS & ISSUES: It's time to end Alabama's judicial override policy

• Published in: Tuscaloosa news (Tuscaloosa, Ala. : 1929)
• Main Author: Stetson, Stephen
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Tuscaloosa, Ala Halifax Media Group 06.12.2015

  Executions have been on hold in Alabama since 2013 amid litigation about lethal injection and the chemicals used to kill. Next year, a federal judge will hear two challenges to Alabama's lethal injection protocol. No matter what the judge decides, the question is not whether Alabama will start executing people again, but how and when. Among death penalty states, Alabama is one of three allowing trial judges to disregard a jury's recommended sentence of life without parole. We're also the only state with no guidelines on how judges make decisions to "override" a jury recommendation. Alabama's policies surrounding capital defense can have devastating consequences. In one case, the client's lawyer never told the judge that an expert had opined, before trial, that the victim died of natural causes. As the lawyer later testified, he kept this potentially lifesaving development to himself because he was not authorized to hire the expert and was "concerned with receiving the trial judge's anger by asking for more money and/or a continuance."