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Alabama Law Lets Executions Take Place Against a Jury's Wishes

By standdown

That's the title of an editorial in today's Birmingham News.  LINKJefferson County Circuit Judge Teresa Petelos last week refused to go over a jury's head and sentence Bobby Ray Sims to death. Instead, Petelos accepted the jury's recommendation, which was that Sims should spend the rest of his life in prison, with no chance for parole, for killing Vernon and Teresa Florence of Alliance in 2007. Petelos made the right choice. It's not that Sims' crime wasn't awful and senseless and worthy of death under Alabama's laws. It's that a jury of regular people who looked at all the evidence didn't believe the ultimate punishment was called for. That should be what counts in these serious cases, and in most states, it would be...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on May 11, 2009 (boomark / email).