Alabama House votes to end judicial override in sentencing

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama lawmakers on Tuesday voted to end the state’s one-of-a-kind practice of allowing judges to hand down death sentences even if a jury recommends life in prison.

Alabama is the only state that continues to allow a judge to override a jury’s recommendation when sentencing capital murder cases. The House of Representatives voted 78-19 to abolish the practice. Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley indicated he intends to sign the legislation.

“It places the death penalty back in the proper perspective. It puts it … where in my opinion the Constitution intends it to be: in the hands of juries,” said Rep. Chris England, the Tuscaloosa Democrat who sponsored the legislation in the House.

The legislation would only affect future death sentences and not any of the 183 inmates currently on Alabama’s death row.

Alabama was left standing alone after Florida and Delaware changed their death penalty procedures to abolish judicial override. Critics argued override interjected politics into the life and death decision because judges would face election-year pressure to appear tough on crime.

A rare bipartisan coalition emerged in the GOP-controlled Legislature to push for an end to the practice. The sponsor of the Senate bill, Sen. Dick Brewbaker, is a Republican, while the sponsor of the House bill is a Democrat. Helping the legislation, England said, was the concern that federal courts might one day strike down Alabama’s death penalty sentencing structure. However, not everyone was in favor. Rep. Allen Treadaway, a police captain, listed examples in which he thought judges rightly overrode juries decisions. He mentioned a case in which a judge overruled a jury’s decision to give a person convicted of killing three Birmingham police officers life in prison.

“I think we’ve got a good system in place,” said Treadaway, a Republican from Morris.

Since 1976, Alabama judges have overridden jury recommendations 112 times, according to the Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative. In 101 of those cases, the judges gave a death sentence. The bill would also prevent judges from giving a life sentence if a jury recommended a death sentence.

Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, said last month that 20 percent of the people on death row are there because of judicial override.

“Override undermines the role of jurors, who sometimes deliberate for hours to make the right decisions in these cases on behalf of the community,” Stevenson said. “Alabama has had one of the highest death-sentencing rates in the country largely because we add to death row so many people juries do not believe should be executed.”

Bentley commended Brewbaker and England for sponsoring the legislation.

“HB32 will undergo the standard legal review process; however I am looking forward to signing this bill,” Bentley wrote in a statement.

“Override undermines the role of jurors, who sometimes deliberate for hours to make the right decisions in these cases on behalf of the community.” — BRYAN STEVENSON, FOUNDER OF

THE EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE