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executions
Citing 'Unjust' Death Sentence, Alabama Gov. Grants Clemency to Sonny Burton
"The state was set to execute Sonny for a crime he didn't commit, but tens of thousands of people nationwide demanded justice—and our voices were heard," said the ACLU.
Mar 10, 2026
Amid nationwide public outcry, Republican Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey—a staunch supporter of capital punishment—on Tuesday spared a death row inmate who did not kill the man for whose murder he was sentenced to die and was scheduled for execution on Thursday.
“I firmly believe that the death penalty is just punishment for society’s most heinous offenders, as shown by the 25 executions I have presided over as governor," Ivey said in a statement. "In order to ensure the continued viability of the death penalty, however, I also believe that a government’s most consequential action must be administered fairly and proportionately."
"Doug Battle was brutally murdered by Derrick DeBruce while shopping in an auto parts store. But DeBruce was ultimately sentenced to life without parole," the governor continued. "Charles Burton did not shoot the victim, did not direct the triggerman to shoot the victim, and had already left the store by the time the shooting occurred. Yet Mr. Burton was set to be executed while DeBruce was allowed to live out his life in prison."
"I cannot proceed in good conscience with the execution of Mr. Burton under such disparate circumstances," Ivey added. "I believe it would be unjust for one participant in this crime to be executed while the participant who pulled the trigger was not. To be clear, Mr. Burton will not be eligible for parole and will rightfully spend the remainder of his life behind bars for his role in the robbery that led to the murder of Doug Battle. He will now receive the same punishment as the triggerman."
Burton—who is 75 years old and goes by the name Sonny—has been on Alabama’s death row since 1992, a year after Battle's murder.
"I didn’t kill no one, true enough, but I made a mistake by being part of the crime,” Burton told CNN in an interview last week, anticipating his execution. “I made a mistake, and it seems like all my friends have forgave me. I hope that my friends will remember me and remember that I was a real friend, a good friend.”
While Republican Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall condemned Ivey for sparing a "murderer," both death penalty supporters and opponents welcomed the commutation.
BREAKING: Alabama Governor Kay Ivey commuted the death sentence of Sonny Burton.The state was set to execute Sonny for a crime he didn't commit, but tens of thousands of people nationwide demanded justice — and our voices were heard.
— ACLU (@aclu.org) March 10, 2026 at 9:18 AM
“It’s absolutely not fair. You don’t execute someone who did not pull the trigger,” Priscilla Townsend, one of three jurors in Burton's trial who asked Ivey for clemency, told the Associated Press, adding that she supports executing "the worst of the worst."
Tori Battle, Doug Battle's daughter, had also pleaded for clemency for Burton.
"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," Battle wrote in an article published last December in the Montgomery Advertiser. "My love for my father does not require another death, especially one that defies reason."
Laura Burton, executive director of the US Campaign to End the Death Penalty, said in a statement Tuesday: "We are grateful that Gov. Ivey recognized that Charles 'Sonny' Burton should not be executed. The death penalty process is deeply flawed when someone who was not present for the killing faces execution, while the person who committed the murder does not. It is uplifting to see that more and more governors across the ideological spectrum are recognizing problems with death penalty cases."
Last November, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Still—also a staunch death penalty advocate—granted clemency to Tremane Wood with just minutes to spare before his scheduled execution for a murder his late brother confessed to committing.
Last year, Ivey also commuted the death sentence of Robin “Rocky” Myers to life in prison without parole, citing serious doubts about his guilt.
There are still 155 people on Alabama's death row, according to the state Department of Corrections. The state has executed five people since the beginning of 2025—one by lethal injection and four by nitrogen gas, a method rejected by veterinarians for euthanizing animals and condemned by United Nations human rights experts as possible torture.
Demetrius Minor, executive director of the death penalty abolition group Conservatives Concerned, said Tuesday that “we want to thank Gov. Ivey for granting clemency for Charles 'Sonny' Burton."
"This brings tremendous relief to his family and so many across the country," Minor added. "Conservatives know that government power can be abused and should not be used to execute someone who was not in the building when the murder was committed. Gov. Ivey acted on these conservative principles."
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Amid Global Calls to End Capital Punishment, US Set to Execute 7 Men This Month
"We won’t give up until the death penalty is abolished everywhere," said Amnesty International on World Day Against the Death Penalty. "Change is possible."
Oct 10, 2025
Human rights defenders marked World Day Against the Death Penalty on Friday by renewing pleas to end capital punishment—calls that came amid a surge in US executions and the Trump administration's extrajudicial high-seas massacres of alleged drug traffickers.
"The death penalty does little to deter crime or serve victims," the United Nations said on social media. "It has no place in the 21st century."
Noting that two-thirds of the world's countries have abolished capital punishment, the UN human rights office asserted that "it's time to end it—everywhere, for everyone."
"You can free a prisoner. You can clear a conviction. But you can’t correct an execution," the office said. "Innocent people are sentenced to death, in many regions of the world. And those who are executed are rarely the powerful. It’s the poor, the marginalized, those with the fewest means to defend themselves."
"The death penalty doesn’t prevent crime," it added. "It doesn’t deliver justice. It only repeats violence, in the name of the law."
We must end the death penalty, once and for all.On this World Day Against the Death Penalty, add your name to the growing number of people calling for an end to capital punishment.
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— ACLU (@aclu.org) October 10, 2025 at 7:19 AM
Amnesty International said on social media, "Over the past year, executions have significantly increased in countries such as Singapore, Kuwait, Iran, and the USA, while people continue to be executed at an alarming rate in Saudi Arabia."
"Among these rises, some governments have shown renewed determination to use this cruel punishment as a tool of repression and control," Amnesty continued. "They continue to ignore international human rights law.
The group noted on a hopeful note that "the number of countries resorting to the death penalty is decreasing.”
"We won’t give up until the death penalty is abolished everywhere," Amnesty added. "Change is possible."
European Parliament Human Rights Subcommittee Chair Mounir Satouri reaffirmed lawmakers' "absolute opposition to the death penalty, under all circumstances and without exception."
"The death penalty constitutes a cruel punishment that fundamentally denies human dignity and is incompatible with the right to life and with the prohibition of torture," he said.
“Today, more than two-thirds of all countries have either abolished the death penalty in law or no longer implement it in practice. 113 countries had abolished the death penalty in law by the end of 2024," Satouri noted. "I urge the remaining 55 states that continue to impose or carry out death sentences to establish a moratorium as an initial step toward its complete abolition."
“It has been proven that the death penalty does not deter crime and that its imposition disproportionately affects vulnerable groups," he added. "Moreover, in today's more authoritarian global environment, the death penalty and assassinations sponsored by authoritarian regimes are used as a political tool against political opponents, independent journalists, and human rights defenders."
Those remarks came as US President Donald Trump faces condemnation at home and abroad for ordering a series of extrajudicial assassinations of what his administration claims are drug traffickers transporting narcotics in small boats in the Caribbean Sea off the Venezuelan coast.
Trump—who oversaw a resurgence of federal executions during his first term—signed an executive order on his first day back in the White House affirming capital punishment as "an essential tool for deterring and punishing those who would commit the most heinous crimes," despite study after study showing it does not deter criminal activity.
Capital punishment abolitionists earlier this year denounced US Attorney General Pam Bondi's decision to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024. More recently, Bondi has also ominously threatened to take the "same approach" to anti-fascist protesters as the administration has taken against drug cartels.
However, human rights defenders are currently most alarmed by a surge in executions in Republican-controlled states, where Indiana death row inmate Roy Lee Ward—who was killed by lethal injection on Friday—was the first of five scheduled executions in the coming week.
Next Tuesday, Lance Shockley in Missouri and Samuel Lee Smithers in Florida are set to be executed. Smithers would be the 14th person to be killed this year under the direction of Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose expansion of the state's capital punishment regime has raised constitutional concerns.
On Wednesday, Charles Ray Crawford is scheduled to be executed in Mississippi, while Arizona is set to put Richard Djerf to death on October 17.
In a rare reprieve, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Thursday blocked next week's scheduled execution of Robert Roberson—who was convicted of murdering his 2-year-old daughter on the basis of scientifically debunked "shaken baby syndrome"—by sending his case back to court.
Update: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted Robert Roberson a stay of execution October 9, a week before he was set to be killed. A lower court will now reconsider Roberson’s case.
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— Texas Observer (@texasobserver.org) October 9, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Two more executions—Anthony Todd Boyd in Alabama and Norman Mearle Grim in Florida—are planned for later this month.
There have been 35 executions in the United States so far this year, up from 25 in 2024 and the most since 2017, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Noting that October is "Respect Life Month" in the United States, Catholic Mobilizing Network executive director Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy told Vatican News Friday that “it's a stark contrast to honoring all human life that we see such an affront to the dignity of the human person."
"We need to value the dignity of every human person," Vaillancourt added. "That includes people who are sitting on death row. So we will not give up this fight. And the progress that we've made has been hard-won. We will move forward and continue in order to end the death penalty in the United States.”
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South Carolina AG: Freddie Owens to Be Executed Despite Key Witness' Bombshell Claim
The witness—who claims he falsely identified Owens as the killer because he feared for his life—said that barring a stay, the condemned man "will die for a crime that he did not commit."
Sep 19, 2024
Barring an unlikely 11th-hour reprieve from South Carolina's governor or U.S. Supreme Court, correctional officials are set to carry out the state's first execution in 13 years after its attorney general brushed off a key prosecution witness' bombshell claim that the convicted man did not commit the murder for which he is condemned to die.
Freddie Owens—who legally changed his name to Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah while imprisoned—was convicted and sentenced to die by lethal injection for the shooting death of convenience store cashier Irene Graves, a 41-year-old mother of three, during a 1997 robbery.
Although there was no forensic evidence linking the then-19-year-old man to the murder, state prosecutors relied upon the testimony of co-defendant Steven Golden, who pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Owens as part of a plea deal to spare his own life.
On Wednesday Golden filed an affidavit in the South Carolina Supreme Court in which he declared that he lied about the identity of Graves' killer.
"If this court does not grant a stay, Freddie will die for a crime he did not commit," he wrote.
However, on Thursday the state's highest court rejected Owens' bid.
"Freddie Owens is not the person who shot Irene Graves at the Speedway on November 1, 1997," Golden's filing stated. "Freddie was not present when I robbed the Speedway that day."
"The detectives told me they knew Freddie was with me when I robbed the Speedway," wrote Golden, who was 18 years old at the time of the crime. "They told me I might as well make a statement against Freddie because he already told his side to everyone and they were just trying to get my side of the story."
"I was scared that I would get the death penalty if I didn't make a statement," he continued. "I signed a waiver of rights form and then signed a statement on November 11, 1997."
"In that statement, I substituted Freddie for the person who was really with me in the Speedway that night," Golden claimed. "I did that because I knew that's what the police wanted me to say, and also because I thought the real shooter or his associates might kill me if I named him to the police. I am still afraid of that. But Freddie was actually not there."
Golden—who said he did not name the person who he says killed Graves for fear of his life—added: "I'm coming forward now because I know Freddie's execution date is September 20 and I don't want Freddie to be executed for something he didn't do. This has weighed heavily on my mind and I want to have a clear conscience."
The office of Republican South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson responded to Golden's affidavit on Thursday, calling his claim "inherently suspect" and stating that he "has now made a sworn statement that is contrary to his multiple other sworn statements over 20 years."
The attorney general's statement came after a federal judge on Wednesday declined to halt Owens' execution over his legal team's concerns about the provenance of South Carolina's supply of pentobarbital, which is used in lethal injections.
South Carolina unofficially paused executions in 2011 as lethal injection drugs became increasingly difficult to obtain because pharmaceutical companies enacted bans on their use for capital punishment. The state subsequently passed a law protecting the identity of drug suppliers, resulting in renewed stocks.
Additionally, the state Supreme Court ruled in July that executions by firing squad and electrocution do not violate the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, validating a law signed in 2021 by Republican Gov. Henry McMaster that forces condemned inmates to choose between the two methods of execution at a time when lethal injection drugs were still scarce.
Anti-death penalty campaigners on Wednesday submitted a petition with more than 10,000 signatures asking McMaster to grant Owen clemency.
Although the number of U.S. executions has been steadily decreasing from 85 in 2000 to 24 last year, a flurry of impending state killings has raised alarm among human rights activists. Amnesty International says that in addition to Owens, seven men are scheduled to be put to death in the coming month.
"No government should give itself the power to execute people," Amnesty said Thursday on social media. "It is past time for the U.S. to align with other countries that no longer carry out this cruel and inhuman punishment."
A 2014 study determined that at least 4% of people on U.S. death rows were likely innocent.
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