Browsing Tag

reprieve

U.S. death row prisoner who never killed victim wins last-minute reprieve

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has commuted the death sentence of Charles “Sonny” Burton, a 75-year-old inmate who spent more than three decades on death row for a 1991 Talladega robbery that ended in a customer’s killing. Ivey, a Republican, said it would be unjust to execute Burton because he did not pull the trigger in the fatal shooting. Ivey’s decision spares Burton days before he was scheduled to be executed by nitrogen gas. In a written statement, the governor said the facts of the case did not warrant the ultimate punishment…