We the Jury
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey
In 2017, Alabama took a vital step toward justice. The Legislature passed Senate Bill 16, and Governor Kay Ivey signed it into law, ending judicial override—the practice that allowed a single elected judge to impose a death sentence even after a jury recommended life without parole.
However, the reform was left half-finished because the law was not made retroactive. Today, 25 people remain on Alabama’s death row under a previous sentencing law that state lawmakers and Governor Ivey have already rejected. This issue is about correcting a clear constitutional disparity that, if left unaddressed, will result in the state taking more lives solely because of the date a person was convicted. As former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Drayton Nabers, Jr. noted, allowing judges to override juries introduces political pressure and arbitrariness into life-or-death decisions. Currently, two people convicted of the exact same offense can face entirely different fates simply based on the year they were sentenced.
Governor Ivey has the authority to finish the job. Through clemency, she can commute every death sentence imposed by judicial override to life imprisonment without parole—a penalty that honors jury verdicts and restores equal protection. Other states that ended override, including Delaware and Indiana, applied the change to those already sentenced.
A jury of peers—not one judge—should decide, and the courts should respect the jury’s decision. Let’s finish the job.
Add your name to We, the Jury petition and tell Governor Ivey: twelve citizens decide, not one judge. It's time for Alabama to finish the job and commute these 25 sentences to life without parole.
Sponsored by
To:
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey
From:
[Your Name]
We write to you today asking you to commute the sentences of the people on death row who were sentenced to die against the will of the jury of their peers that convicted them. In 2017, the state recognized that the right to a jury’s decision determining life or death should not be subject to override by a judge. The right to life is too important to take the authority to determine a sentence of life without parole out of the hands of the jury.
But this change to the law was incomplete, and it has not been set right in the time since that change. More than two dozen people still sit on death row because the override ban was not made retroactive. You have the ability and authority to set things right. Alabama’s justice system should respect the role of the jury in making life or death decisions. Alabama is an extremely unusual outlier by still having people on death row whose sentences were imposed against the will of the Alabama citizens who assessed the evidence and convicted them. The jury’s determination is the legally proper method for determining both innocence or guilt and the proper sentence in trials now, and the jury’s determination should determine the outcome no matter when the person was convicted.
The difference in life or death should not rest on the year a person was convicted. Our state decided nearly a decade ago that a judge overriding a jury’s decision should never happen again. We ask you to finish the work the Legislature started. We ask you to do the right thing by commuting the sentences of each person on death row whose sentence resulted from a judge going against the determination of a jury that the person should be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Please commute the sentence of all people sentenced to death by judicial override to life without parole.