MLK’s son asks Alabama to stop execution

MOBILE, Ala. — The son of Martin Luther King Jr. has called on Alabama’s governor to stop Thursday’s plan to execute an inmate for the 2004 killings of three police officers in which authorities say a co-defendant did the shooting.

Nathaniel Woods, 43, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection Thursday evening at a south Alabama prison unless the governor or courts intervene. Family members of Woods also have urged the governor to halt the execution.

Woods and co-defendant Kerry Spencer were convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for the 2004 killings of Birmingham police officers Carlos Owen, Harley A. Chisolm III and Charles R. Bennett. The officers were killed in a hail of gunfire, their deaths rocking Alabama’s largest city that year.

Spencer was the shooter in the slayings, prosecutors said. But they argued that Woods conspired in the killings, which occurred when officers tried to serve a misdemeanor domestic assault warrant on Woods.

Woods’ advocates have argued that Spencer said he was the sole person responsible for the shootings and that there are outstanding questions about the fairness of Woods’ trial.

Martin Luther King III, the son of the late civil rights leader, sent Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey a letter Tuesday “pleading with you not to execute Nathaniel Woods.”

“Killing this African American man, whose case appears to have been strongly mishandled by the courts, could produce an irreversible injustice. Are you willing to allow a potentially innocent man to be executed?” King wrote to Ivey.

Ivey did not immediately issue a public response.