Nathaniel Woods' execution cast scrutiny on Alabama's death penalty — so why is the cop killer who pulled the trigger still alive?
While the family of Nathaniel Woods fumes over his execution and prepares for his funeral, the man who confessed to acting alone in the killing of three Alabama police officers that landed them both on death row is alive and may never be executed, according to his former appellate attorney.
King called the decisions of Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey not to intervene and the U.S. Supreme Court not to halt Woods' death"reprehensible" and a"mockery of justice and constitutional guarantees to a fair trial." As one of her first acts as Alabama's governor, Ivey, whose decision condemned Woods to death, signed the bill.
Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., that focuses on disseminating studies and reports related to capital punishment, said Flower could very well be right. In a decision that only applied to federal cases, the Supreme Court in 1972 struck down the practice as a vestige of the Jim Crow era meant to discriminate against African Americans. The court said the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of a fair trial means jury verdicts in felony trials must be unanimous.
Florida and Delaware were among the most recent states to repeal the practice, in addition to Louisiana. "If Woods' jury had heard that, there's a very strong possibility that they would have acquitted because it destroys the prosecution's theory that essentially he led them into an ambush," Dunham said."I mean, Spencer says, 'Woods couldn't possibly have known I was going to shoot the officers [because] I didn't know I was going to shoot the officers.
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