Alabama Judicial Override Law

Alabama executed a man by lethal injection for a 1998 double murder, three months after a judge’s ruling blocked the state from putting him to death with nitrogen gas. Jeffrey Lee was also sentenced to death under a state policy abolished by Governor Kay Ivey in 2017. The Alabama Public Radio news team focused on the state’s “judicial override” practice, where juries could ask for life in prison for a convicted killer, but the judge could veto that decision and impose death. Lee was one of those cases, before Ivey ended the policy.

Alabama is set to execute a man Thursday night via lethal injection, three months after a judge's ruling blocked the state from putting him to death with nitrogen gas. Jeffery Lee, 49, is scheduled to receive an injection beginning at 6 p.m. at south Alabama's William C. Holman Correctional Facility for killing two people during a 1998 pawnshop robbery in rural Dallas County.

A 2016 investigation by the Alabama Public Radio news team may be getting a fresh look as Governor Kay Ivey considers the fate of two dozen people sentenced to death through the state’s now abolished policy known as “judicial override.”

Alabama lawmakers on Wednesday rejected a bill that would provide new sentences for about 30 inmates who were given the death penalty despite a jury's recommendation of life imprisonment. The 2017 overturning of Alabama’s judicial override law occurred following the airing of Alabama Public Radio’s national award-winning prison investigation “…and justice for all.”

Jurors in 1994 recommended by a 9-3 vote that Rocky Myers be spared the death penalty and serve life in prison. A judge sentenced him to die anyway. Myers is now one of nearly three dozen inmates on Alabama's death row who were placed there under a now-abolished system that allowed judges to override a jury's recommendation in death penalty case.

A legislative committee has approved a bill that would prevent judges from imposing a death sentence when a jury has recommended life imprisonment. The…