Listen to this article
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on March 10 commuted the death sentence of a man who spent three decades on death row for a killing he did not commit, two days before he was scheduled to die.
Ivey revised the punishment for Charles “Sonny” Burton, 75, to life without parole.
Burton was convicted of capital murder for the 1991 shooting of Doug Battle during the robbery of an AutoZone store in Talladega, Alabama. Burton participated in the robbery but had left the building when an accomplice, Derrick DeBruce, shot and killed Battle inside, a witness testified at trial.
DeBruce’s death sentence was eventually changed to life in prison.
The Republican governor said in a statement that while she believes “the death penalty is just punishment for society’s most heinous offenders,” she also believes “it would be unjust for one participant in this crime to be executed while the participant who pulled the trigger was not.”
A jury had convicted Burton — and recommended the death penalty — because he had participated in the robbery. Meanwhile, DeBruce’s sentence was overturned after a court agreed that he had received inadequate counsel. He died in prison in 2020, according to the Alabama Reflector.
Burton maintained that he did not intend for the robbery to lead to a killing, and supporters — including jurors who convicted him and Battle’s family — protested the fact that he remained on death row.
“No one from the State has ever sat with me to explain why Alabama believes it must execute a man who did not kill my father,” Tori Battle, Battle’s daughter, wrote in a December op-ed in the Montgomery Advertiser and other Alabama news outlets.
Burton was scheduled to be executed using nitrogen gas before Ivey intervened.
