Serving as governor comes with a fair number of tough decisions. Life and death decisions. Life-altering decisions. Decisions that affect millions of people. Decisions that keep you up at night—for lots of nights.
But every now and then, an easy decision comes along. A decision that is so obvious and so straightforward—even if it’s one that is certain to get a lot of attention—that it’s a true no-brainer.
What to do with Charles “Sonny” Burton is an easy decision for Governor Kay Ivey.
It’s so easy, in fact, that I can’t believe we’ve reached this point in the discussion—the point where national groups are issuing petitions and state activists are planning rallies and protests.
Just commute the man’s sentence already.
Because there is no one—aside from a few morbid freaks out there—who wants to see Burton put to death at the hands of the state. Not the victim’s family. Not the original jurors. Not a majority of the public.
It serves no one. It is cruel. And it makes absolutely no sense.
If you’re unfamiliar with Burton’s story and his crime, there is no question that he is guilty of doing something incredibly stupid. But not even the state has ever claimed that he killed anyone.
Burton was part of an armed robbery of a Talladega AutoZone store in 1991. He was one of six people who took part in it and was outside of the store when Derrick DeBruce shot and killed store clerk Doug Battle. That part has never been disputed by anyone, including investigators and the original prosecutors. Burton didn’t kill anyone or order anyone to be killed or provide a weapon to do the killing or even witness anyone being killed.
Under Alabama law, when a person is part of a crime in which a person dies, everyone involved in the crime can be charged with murder. And that’s how Burton ended up charged with murder and sitting on death row.
Now, we could argue about the morality of placing a death penalty on a person who didn’t physically commit a murder or even supply the weapon, but we actually have a much bigger issue to discuss here. Because while Burton is on death row for being part of the conspiracy in which a murder occurred, the man who actually pulled the trigger and killed Battle was not.
DeBruce died in 2020 while in prison, but he was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. That sentence came about following a federal court decision in 2014 that overturned his death sentence based on ineffective assistance of counsel. Alabama prosecutors agreed to commute DeBruce’s sentence to life without parole.
So, now the state of Alabama is facing the prospect of putting someone to death for a murder that he didn’t physically commit while at the same time agreeing to commute the sentence of the man who did physically commit the murder.
Does that make any sense to anyone?
And it only gets worse.
Burton, who is now 75 and confined to a wheelchair, is in near constant pain from severe rheumatoid arthritis. He must wear a helmet at all times because he’s fallen so frequently from his ailment.
He has written a letter to Battle’s daughter and his family to ask for forgiveness and to apologize for his role in Battle’s murder. Battle’s daughter, Tori, has written an op-ed asking for Burton’s sentence to be commuted to life without parole. She also called Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office to personally request the change.
In addition, six of the eight jurors who sentenced Burton to death have now stated publicly that they would have no issue with the sentence being commuted. Three of those jurors have personally written to Ivey asking for the change.
So, what are we doing here?
If Ivey commuted Burton’s sentence on Friday, she’d get a few calls thanking her for making the right call and everyone else would forget it happened by Monday. Everyone, that is, but Burton and his family.
Look, the guy did a bad thing. But surely we can agree that spending nearly three decades on death row is punishment enough for being near where a murder happened. Surely we can agree that a guy who didn’t murder someone shouldn’t receive a harsher sentence than the person who did murder someone. Surely we can agree that the right thing to do here is commute the sentence and end this insanity. Surely Kay Ivey will rest easier making that call.
Because it surely doesn’t seem like a very hard call to make.
