WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Supreme Court of the United States rejected hearing a case that questioned the law which has allowed 95 people in Alabama to be executed by judges flouting the recommendations of a jury of the defendant’s peers. Judges in Alabama are allowed to sentence prisoners to death even if juries recommend life behind bars. [contextly_sidebar id=”23845eb4c1dbe36fc476855b49c72040″]
The court declined an appeal from the Mario Woodward case in Alabama. Woodward shot and killed Montgomery Police Officer Keith Houts in 2006. A jury had recommended life without parole by an 8-4 vote, but the trial judge rejected the recommendation and sentenced Woodward to death.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented against the decision not to hear the case. In her written opinion she asked, “What could explain Alabama judges’ distinctive proclivity for imposing death sentences in cases where a jury has already rejected that penalty?” “There is no evidence that criminal activity is more heinous in Alabama than in other states or that Alabama juries are particularly lenient,” she said. “The only answer that is supported by empirical evidence,” Sotomayor wrote, “is one that, in my view, casts a cloud of illegitimacy over the criminal justice system: Alabama judges, who are elected in partisan proceedings, appear to have succumbed to electoral pressures.”
The states of Florida and Delaware have the same rules, but they are subject to much stricter standards. In those states there have been no cases of judicial overrides since 1999.
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