On The Front Lines
Citing Unjust Trial Court Procedure, Rutherford Institute President Appeals to Alabama Governor to Halt Execution
Execution of Anthony Keith Johnson Scheduled for 6:00 p.m., Dec. 12, 2002CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- In a recent letter to Governor Don Siegelman of Alabama, John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, urged him to commute the death sentence of an Alabama inmate scheduled to be executed at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 12, 2002, or stay the execution, on grounds that the inmate may have been wrongly convicted and sentenced for a crime he did not commit. The inmate, Anthony Keith Johnson, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday for a stay while the governor considers the request to intervene.
In his letter, Whitehead argued that the execution of Johnson, who prosecutors now concede did not commit the crime for which he was convicted, would represent a grave miscarriage of justice. In 1984 a jury convicted Johnson of "intentionally caus[ing] the death of Kenneth Cantrell by shooting him with a pistol" and recommended by a 9 to 3 vote that he be sentenced to life imprisonment. However, the trial judge overrode the jury's recommendation and sentenced Johnson to death without issuing any explanation for his actions. Prosecutors now acknowledge that Johnson was not the triggerman who fired the fatal shots but only a witness. In his letter to the governor, Whitehead questioned whether the trial court judge would have taken the extraordinary action of abandoning the jury's recommendation if he knew then what the state now concedes. Whitehead argues that the trial judge's failure to adequately explain his override of the life sentence violated Johnson's Fourteenth Amendment right to be free from a death sentence imposed in an "arbitrary and capricious manner." In a previous ruling, which, unfortunately for Johnson, was not issued retroactively, the Alabama Supreme Court declared that a defendant could not be executed unless he actually intended the victim's death to result. Despite the recent revelations and court precedent, Alabama's attorney general has insisted on proceeding with the execution.
"This case goes to the heart of what is most disturbing--and most fallible--about the way in which capital punishment is carried out in the United States," said Whitehead. "As the more than one hundred death row inmates who have been exonerated can attest, we can ill afford such a miscarriage of justice when human lives are at stake."
The Rutherford Institute is an international, nonprofit civil liberties organization committed to defending constitutional and human rights.
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