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Execution stay granted, same-sex marriage update and Sprouts grocery opening

W. Keith Watkins
U.S. District Court Judge William Keith Watkins

The execution of an Alabama death row inmate has been put on hold.

U.S. District Judge William Keith Watkins granted the emergency stay to Tommy Arthur. The convicted killer is challenging the state’s new execution drug combination on the grounds that it’s cruel and unusual punishment. The cocktail uses the same chemicals used in botched executions in other states.

Project Hope executive director Esther Brown says this form of capital punishment is not that different from policies of the past.

“Slavery was the law of the land, segregation was the law of the land and I loved what Martin Luther King said about Hitler. He asked us not to forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal. But did that make it right?”

Arthur was set to be executed on Thursday for the contract killing of Muscle Shoals businessman Troy Wicker in the 1980s. Watkins says Arthur’s claims will be heard May 5. Alabama has not executed death row inmates since 2013 because of a shortage of lethal injection drugs. Arthur would have been the first inmate put to death with a new drug combination.

Alabama's legal drama over same-sex marriage continues as attorneys are now looking to block a petition currently being heard by the Alabama Supreme Court.

The state Supreme Court voted 6 to 2 last week to consider a petition from two conservative groups hoping to order county probate judges not to issue any more marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Now, lawyers are asking Mobile's U.S. District Judge Callie Granade, the judge originally responsible for overturning Alabama's same-sex marriage ban, to tell Attorney General Luther Strange to block the petition.

Alabama's American Civil Liberties Union says the attorney general does have the ability to control all civil litigation brought in the name of the state.

Briefs are currently being filed in the petition before the state Supreme Court. It's unclear at this point whether the Court will hear oral arguments before issuing their response.

Residents of Birmingham, Huntsville, and Hoover will soon get a new place to buy organic groceries.

The Sprouts market chain is opening three new stores starting today. The first shop will be in Birmingham with the other two locations coming in March and April. The chain first opened in Arizona in 2002 and has since grown to two hundred stores nationwide.

Sprouts spokeswoman Donna Egan says each store location is selected after a long study of the customer base.

“We’d love it if we could wave our magic wand and open them all on the same day. But, we don’t just want to open a store, we want to open it the right way. And ensure that we can deliver outstanding customer service and that takes time.”

Egan says Sprouts positions itself as an economical organic grocery with items at lower prices than competitors. After Birmingham’s opening today, Huntsville is next in March.

Opelika will be getting nearly 175 new jobs soon by way of a new food processing plant.

Golden State Foods Corporation is planning to build a new meat processing facility in Opelika. They're investing between 40 and 45 million dollars in the project. Opelika's mayor Gary Fuller said yesterday that the company plans to employ 173 workers at the new plant.

Company executives say they chose Opelika largely because of a readily available workforce and the town's proximity to Interstate 85.

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