Montgomery, AL – Death row inmate John Forrest Parker has asked the Alabama Supreme Court to stop his execution because the trial judge overrode the jury's recommendations that he be sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The 42-year-old Parker is scheduled to die by lethal injection Thursday at Holman Prison in Atmore for the March 1988 murder-for-hire death of Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett. She died after being beaten with a pipe and stabbed repeatedly at her home in Colbert County.
One of Parker's attorneys, Bryan Stevenson of Montgomery, said says the judge's decision to override the jury's sentencing recommendation was not consistent with an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that set guidelines for when a judge can do that.
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