The Alabama House of Representatives recently rejected a bill that would have permitted the resentencing of death row inmates who had been sentenced by a trial judge. Defeated by a 9-4 vote in Alabama’s House Judicial Committee, the bill would have opened the window for a number of inmates on death row to gain recourse and potentially have their sentences revised.
The legislation was a response to an opinion issued by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 in the case of Hursts v. Florida, declaring that the Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to determine each fact necessary for imposing a death sentence. Following the court’s decision, Alabama enacted AL SB16 in 2017 prohibiting judicial override in capital cases.
However, both the court ruling and the legislation had a loophole: they did not necessitate a pathway for those previously sentenced by judicial override to seek resentencing. To address this, Representative Chris England proposed the unsuccessful AL HB27. The bill sought to enforce a retroactive application of AL SB16 for death row inmates sentenced prior to June 1, 2024. According to England, had it passed, the bill would have affected 33 death row inmates.
Despite England’s insistence that the bill only solidified existing law, it was met with opposition. Committee Chairman Jim Hill expressed his reluctance to second-guess or override the decisions made by judges acting under the law at that time. Hill argued that the individuals who received their sentences during the period when judicial override was legally permissible should remain subject to the laws that were in place when their trials occurred.
The bill ultimately did not pass, effectively maintaining the status quo for the inmates in question. Despite the Supreme Court’s decision and new state law, any cases predisposed under the old system lack the opportunity for review or potential adjustment of their sentences.
This legal news report is based on information acquired from JURIST News.