Tag: alabama

Alabama’s next death penalty atrocity: The execution of Casey McWhorter

30 years after a murder committed by three teenage boys, Alabama plans to execute one of them, Casey McWhorter, who was just three months past his 18th birthday at the time of the crime. (McWhorter’s co-defendants were 15 and 16, respectively.)

Any argument in favor of executing McWhorter is undercut by the illogical, unbending brutality of a bright-line legal rule established by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2005, in Roper v. Simmons, the Court held the 8th and 14th Amendments prohibit the execution of defendants younger than age 18, but, not the execution of juveniles like McWhorter whom — mentally and emotionally — under any reasonable interpretation, were children at the time of their crime(s). This is because of Roper’s legal fiction that childhood rigidly ends at 18 years of age — on the nose — and not a day, or as in McWhorter’s case, 3 months, older. Describing that period in his life to a reporter recently, McWhorter said: “I had issues in my head that I didn’t know how to work out.”

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State Cleared to Use Never-Before-Seen Execution Method on Murderer of Preacher’s Wife

A divided Alabama Supreme Court has ruled in favor of using nitrogen gas as a method of execution, marking the first instance of the method being considered for carrying out a death sentence.

The all-Republican court, in a 6-2 decision issued on Wednesday, granted the state attorney general’s request for an execution warrant for Kenneth Eugene Smith. Smith was one of two individuals convicted in the 1988 murder-for-hire killing of Elizabeth Sennett in northwestern Alabama. The specific execution date will be determined later by Governor Kay Ivey.

This decision brings Alabama closer to becoming the first state to pursue nitrogen gas as an execution method. However, it is likely that further legal challenges will emerge before this method is actually used. Other states like Oklahoma and Mississippi have also authorized nitrogen hypoxia for executions, a process in which an inmate breathes pure nitrogen and is deprived of the oxygen required for survival. While advocates argue it may be painless, opponents liken it to unethical human experimentation.

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‘Outrageous and flatly unconstitutional’: Lawyer decries arrest of Alabama journalists

Police arrested a southwestern Alabama newspaper publisher and a reporter for publishing an article that prosecutors say was based on confidential grand jury evidence.

Don Fletcher reported for the Atmore News on an investigation into the local school board’s payments to seven former school employees that Escambia County district attorney says broke the law against revealing grand jury proceedings, and both the reporter and publisher Sherry Digmon were arrested and charged with a felony, reported the Washington Post.

“While it’s illegal for a grand juror, witness or court officer to disclose grand-jury proceedings, it’s not a crime for a media outlet to publish such leaked material, provided the material was obtained by legal means,” legal experts told the Post.

Theodore J. Boutrous, an attorney who has represented media organizations, said the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently ruled that the First Amendment protects journalists who publish information of public importance, even if that information came from a source who broke the law.

“That applies to grand jury information, Boutrous said, calling the Alabama case “extraordinary, outrageous and flatly unconstitutional.”

The newspaper’s publisher and co-owner is a member of the county school board, and she voted recently against renewing the contract of the superintendent – who has been publicly supported by district attorney Stephen Billy.

“I wish I could [comment],” said Digmon, the publisher. “I would rather not answer. I can only refer you to my attorney.”

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Alabama Cops Who Arrested Mechanic for Not Giving Them His ID Denied Qualified Immunity

A federal court has sided with Roland Edger, an Alabama man who says he was wrongfully arrested after he declined to give police officers his driver’s license in 2019. While a lower court had granted qualified immunity to the officers, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit overturned that decision, ruling that the officers clearly violated Edger’s Fourth Amendment rights and that Edger’s suit against them may go forward.

In June 2019, Edger, a mechanic in Huntsville, Alabama, received a call from a customer, who told him that his wife’s car had broken down and asked him to come out to repair it. The car was in the parking lot of a local church, where the customer’s wife worked. The customer told Edger he could pick up her keys at the church’s front desk.

When he arrived at the church on June 10, a few days after the customer had called, Edger retrieved the keys from the church and began inspecting the car. According to the ruling, Edger says he believed something was wrong with the car’s steering or tires and that he’d need to return with the necessary tools to fix the vehicle.

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Alabama Judge Issues Ruling in Carlee Russell Hoax Case

An Alabama judge found Carlee Russell guilty of two misdemeanor charges after she faked her own abduction in July.

Hoover Municipal Court Judge Thomas Brad Bishop on Wednesday found Russell guilty on charges of false reporting of an incident and false reporting to law enforcement, both misdemeanors, according to FOX affiliate WBRC.

The state recommended one year in jail, the maximum, which is six months for each charge. They also recommended a fine of $831 and restitution of $17,974.88.

According to the report, the case will be appealed to circuit court.

Russell, 24, dialed 911 on July 13 at around 9:34 p.m. to report a toddler walking along the southbound side of Interstate 459 near Birmingham, according to the Hoover Police Department.

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Video shows high school band director shocked with stun gun, arrested after refusing to stop music

Police body camera video shows an Alabama high school band director being shocked with a stun gun and arrested by officers in front of screaming students, in a chaotic scuffle that broke out after he refused to immediately stop the band as it played in the bleachers following a football game.

State Rep. Juandalynn Givan, who is representing band director Johnny Mims as his attorney, said Tuesday that the incident is an “alarming abuse of power” that instead “should have been should have been deescalated.”

The Birmingham Police Department said it remains under investigation but the band director resisted arrest and allegedly pushed an officer.

The altercation erupted after the game last Thursday between Minor and Jackson-Olin high schools.

In the body camera video released by police Monday night, officers are seen approaching Mims, the band director at Minor, as the band plays in the stands. They ask him several times to stop the band and clear the stadium. Mims continues to direct the band and replies to the officer, “Get out of my face.”

“We’re fixing to go,” he continues. “This is their last song.”

As the music continues, an officer tells Mims he will go to jail. and another says she will contact the school. Mims flashes two thumbs up and says, “That’s cool.”

“Put him in handcuffs,” an officer is later heard saying.

The video shows that the band played for about two minutes after officers approached Mims.

After the music stops, officers are seen on the video apparently trying to arrest him, in a scrum of bodies. One says Mims swung at an officer and must go to jail, and Mims denies doing so. An officer then shocks Mims with a stun gun.

Students — more than 140 were present, according to Givan — are heard screaming in the night as the arrest plays out.

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Alabama Says Helping With Out-of-State Abortions Is ‘Criminal Conspiracy’

Alabama’s attorney general is insisting that he has the right to prosecute people who help pregnant women obtain out-of-state abortions. In a court filing earlier this week, Steve Marshall said such actions amount to criminal conspiracy.

Marshall’s filing comes as part of a case involving the Yellowhammer Fund, a nonprofit that bills itself as an “abortion advocacy and reproductive justice organization.” The group and two women’s health centers—the West Alabama Women’s Center and the
Alabama Women’s Center—sued Marshall in July over the attorney general’s suggestion he could go after groups that help pregnant Alabamans get out-of-state abortions.

Marshall first made this suggestion last summer on a local talk radio program, The Jeff Poor Show. “If someone was promoting themselves out as a funder of abortion out of state, then that is potentially criminally actionable for us,” Marshall said, according to the Yellowhammer Fund’s complaint. “And so, one thing we will do in working with local law enforcement and prosecutors is making sure that we fully implement this law.”

“There is nothing about that law that restricts any individual from driving across state lines” and seeking an abortion, Marshall continued. But an “entity or a group that is using funds…to facilitate” out-of-state abortion travel “is something we are going to look at closely.”

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Triggered: Woke Alabama School Suspends 6-Year-Old Over ‘Finger Guns’ During Cops And Robbers Game

A six-year-old Alabama boy was suspended from school and had his “permanent record” threatened for making ‘finger guns’ during a game of cops and robbers.

“They labeled my six-year-old as a potentially violent and dangerous student because he was being a little boy and playing cops and robbers with another student (who was also suspended) and using his fingers like a gun,” said the boy’s father, Jarrod Belcher, in a statement released on Friday, Sept. 8.

According to the Epoch Times, a Jefferson County Board of Education “Due Process Referral for Class III Infractions” form released by Gun Owners of America (GOA) reads that Belcher’s son was “using gun fingers to shoot at another student.”

The boy was subsequently suspended from school pending a hearing with his parents.

According to the letter, on Sept. 1, 2023, two boys were playing “cops and robbers” during recess at Bagley Elementary School.

“During the course of their play, the children reportedly extended their index fingers and thumbs and said ‘bang-bang’ at each other,” the letter reads.

The child, identified as J.B., was suspended and accused of committing a Class III infraction. This is the district’s most serious infraction. According to the Jefferson County School District’s Student Parent Handbook, Class III infractions include possession of guns or explosives, sexual battery, battery of a school district employee, and robbery, among others.

The boy would only be allowed back in school after a hearing with his parents and the district. -Epoch Times

Following a complaint from the Belchers, the disciplinary action was downgraded to a less severe Class II infraction, however Belcher is still calling BS.

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Alabama Set To Try New, Untested Execution Method

Alabama wants to execute a man so badly that they’re likely to become the first state in the nation to kill someone by nitrogen hypoxia. 

Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, who was sentenced to death for a 1988 murder-for-hire killing, has already survived one execution attempt from the state. Last November, he won a court case allowing him to demand to be executed specifically by nitrogen hypoxia, a method that has been approved in Alabama since 2018 but has remained untested.

Nonetheless, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall still asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date for Smith last week, with plans to use the method.

While four states in addition to Alabama have approved execution by lethal gas, no one has been executed using this method since 1999. While 20th-century gas chambers typically killed inmates using cyanide gas, death by nitrogen hypoxia is a completely untested method. Under the proposed process, an inmate would be placed in a gas chamber, where they would be forced to breathe pure nitrogen, ultimately causing death by suffocation due to the lack of oxygen.

After long arguing that they should be allowed to kill Smith by lethal injection because the state had not yet developed a nitrogen hypoxia protocol, state officials unveiled a formal nitrogen hypoxia process in conjunction with their motion to set Smith’s execution date. Under the process, the inmate will wear a mask, which will force them to breathe pure nitrogen gas “for 15 minutes, or five minutes following a flatline indication on the EKG, whichever is longer,” resulting in death by suffocation.

Smith won the right to be executed by this method in a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit last November. Smith argued that a lethal injection attempt would expose him to “an intolerable risk of torture, cruelty, or substantial pain,” citing the state’s previous botched executions.

The same day as the 11th Circuit’s ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a stay of execution for Smith. Alabama officials attempted to kill him by lethal injection that day, but they abandoned their attempt after they tried unsuccessfully for several hours to place IV needles in Smith’s arms.

While nitrogen hypoxia has been touted as a more humane method for killing death-row inmates—it’s simply unknown how much suffering death by nitrogen hypoxia causes.

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Alabama Judge Halts Medical Marijuana Licensing Again, This Time Over Alleged Open Meetings Violations

A Montgomery County Circuit Judge Thursday put a hold on Alabama’s medical cannabis program amid a lawsuit alleging the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC) violated the state’s Open Meetings Act at its most recent meeting.

The stay, issued by Judge James Anderson, followed a heated hearing where an attorney for the AMCC suggested the commission would air applicants’ “dirty laundry.”

Applicants denied a license won’t be able to request an investigative hearing until after the stay is lifted, and the commission will have to put site visits and evaluations on hold. AMCC Director John McMillan said that it will be “impossible” to issue licenses at an August 31 meeting.

“We’ll most likely have to schedule another meeting,” McMillan said after the hearing, and added that they would have to complete site visits.

Alabama Always, which sued the commission last month over the appointment of former chair Steven Stokes, filed a lawsuit against the AMCC, alleging the commission violated the state’s open meetings law at its August 10 meeting. The company, which applied for but did not receive a license, alleged that commission members privately nominated companies for public votes on license awards during an executive session.

The lawsuit alleges that commission members were instructed to seal their nominations in an envelope during the executive session, and the companies with the most nominations received a public vote in the August 10 meeting.

The AMCC re-awarded licenses for the production and distribution of medical cannabis at the August 10 meeting, two months after stopping earlier awards amid questions about the evaluation of applications.

The judge allowed other parties to join the suit by the end of the week. Alabama Always and other companies suing AMCC will have to prove that the commission violated state law.

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