Alabama Death Penalty Law Is Unconstitutional, State Judge Rules

Alabama's lethal injection chamber at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama.

Dave Martin / ASSOCIATED PRESS

A state trial court judge in Alabama on Thursday ruled from the bench that the state's death penalty is unconstitutional in a challenge brought by four capital murder defendants.

Jefferson County Circuit Judge Tracie Todd told BuzzFeed News that a final, written ruling in the matter is expected by Friday morning. The news of Todd's bench ruling was first reported by AL.com earlier Thursday. According to AL.com, the ruling came in response to a hearing sought by capital murder defendants Benjamin Acton, Terrell McMullin, Stanley Chatman, and Kenneth Billups.

According to a summary of her ruling provided to BuzzFeed News, Todd has concluded that Alabama's death sentencing scheme is similar enough to the Florida scheme struck down in January by the U.S. Supreme Court that it, too, violates the Sixth Amendment constitutional right to a trial by jury.

In the Florida case, the Supreme Court ruled that the state's sentencing scheme was unconstitutional because the state relied on “a judge’s factfinding” and not “a jury’s verdict” to sentence a person to death.

Specifically, Todd discusses how the Alabama system is, in her view, more constitutionally troubling than Florida's system due to the fact that judges in Alabama often override life sentences recommended by juries in capital cases, choosing instead to impose death sentences.

Todd, however, goes beyond the ruling in the Supreme Court case about Florida's system, detailing what she views as systematic and pervasive problems throughout Alabama's system. In the context of the imposition of the death penalty in Alabama, Todd attacks perceived bias of judges, assignment of cases, and appointment of counsel to defendants as providing further constitutional violations of the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments.

Source BuzzFeed - Politics http://ift.tt/1QvgeZI