Talladega, St. Clair counties grant few death sentences
| According to the Death Penalty Information Center, a record low of 114 inmates were condemned to die in 2006, down from 128 in 2005. But Alabama courts handed down 13 in 2006, up from 10 in 2005. Although lethal injection was recommended by a Talladega County jury, a 2003 case against Jimmy Lee Brooks Jr. originated in Russell County. It was moved to Talladega due to pretrial publicity, but was prosecuted by the Russell County District Attorney�s Office, and the ultimate sentence was imposed by a Russell County circuit judge. Except for the Brooks case, the death penalty was last handed down in Talladega in 2000. The last death penalty in St. Clair County was a year before that. Nationally, one of the frequently cited concerns regarding the death penalty is in the area of �judicial override,� meaning that the judge is not bound by a jury�s recommendation at sentencing. According to the Associated Press, Alabama and Florida are the only remaining death penalty states with judicial override, and only Alabama allows a judge to impose a death sentence when a majority of the jurors vote for life without parole. �The last capital murder trial we had in St. Clair was the retrial of a man previously sentenced to death for beating his 4-year-old son to death,� St. Clair County District Attorney Richard Minor said. �There was a flaw in the jury instruction, and the case was remanded. The jury convicted him a second time, and again recommended the death penalty, but the judge chose to sentence him to life without parole instead. �I can actually think of two or three other cases like that in the last few years, so when people talk about doing away with judicial overrides, they might want to be careful what they wish for. I�ve seen more death penalty recommendations overridden than I have life without parole recommendations.� Minor speculated this might be the case because �with St. Clair County being so conservative, judicial overrides might not be as significant an issue here as, say, Jefferson County. Most of the legislators I�ve heard talking about this seem to be from the Jefferson County area, anyway.� Since the last death sentence was imposed in a local case in Talladega, four capital murder indictments have made it to trial, all resulting in sentences of life without possibility of parole. According to District Attorney Steve Giddens, two of the cases were resolved by pleas and in the other two the ultimate sanction did not apply. One because of a loophole in the capital murder statute and the other based on a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision. In the former instance, the state Legislature amended the capital murder statute to include murder by shooting into and from a vehicle. The Legislature did not similarly amend the list of aggravating circumstances that a jury can consider when deciding between death and life without parole. The latter involved a defendant with an IQ of less than 70. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that executing a defendant meeting the legal definition of mentally retarded constituted cruel and unusual punishment. There is currently only one capital case pending in St. Clair County, and five pending in Talladega County. �Whether or not a defendant gets the death penalty depends on their being convicted of a capital crime based on the law and the evidence,� Giddens said. �I don�t really have an opinion on the numbers other than to say that I do not seek the death penalty arbitrarily. The facts are questions for the jury, and they make a recommendation to the judge. That�s the way it�s always been.� Minor said he didn�t really know why there had been so few recent capital prosecutions in St. Clair County. �There was a time a few years ago when we had five or six pending at a time, just left and right,� he said. �Violent crime is down nationally, and we have not seen a great number of homicides here, although we just found a body in Riverside two days ago, so maybe I shouldn�t say that. We�ve seen a decrease in manufacturing cases, but most of our other felonies have remained pretty constant.� The last alleged capital murder in Talladega County was in 2005, and the oldest pending case is a remand for a conviction more than 20 years ago. The remaining three have been pending for several years now, for a variety of reasons, according to Giddens. �Everything takes time,� he said. �You have to wait on the autopsy, then for forensics, for ballistics, and now with Atkins you need to make sure the defendant�s IQ is over 70. Then you need to conduct a hearing on that. Then you have hearings on defense requests for independent DNA, independent forensic analysis, a psychiatric evaluation, mitigation experts, etc. �And I�m not saying any of that is wrong, there is no intentional delay there. But if you�re going to be applying the ultimate punishment, you need to be 100 percent ready, out of a sense of fairness for the defendant. Then afterward, you have the jury recommendation in the sentencing phase, and then a hearing on that,� Giddens said. �But I believe that obviously the people I have convicted of capital murder believe in the death penalty, since they had absolutely no problem executing someone with no due process, no hearings at all. We don�t pick them out of a hat. It�s the ultimate punishment for the ultimate crime.� |
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About Chris Norwood
| | Chris Norwood is a staff writer for The Daily Home. |
| Phone: FAX: E-mail: | 256 299-2114 256 299-2192 news@dailyhome.com |
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