Alabama sets execution for man in auto parts store customer’s death
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Monthly Digital Subscription
$1 per week for 24 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Billed as $4.00 plus GST every four weeks. After 24 weeks, price increases to the regular rate of $19.95 plus GST every four weeks. Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.
Monthly Digital Subscription
$4.99/week*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Billed as $19.95 plus GST every four weeks. Cancel any time.
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional
$1 for the first 4 weeks*
*Your next subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $16.99 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $23.99 plus GST every four weeks.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama has scheduled a March execution date for a man sentenced to death for a fatal shooting during a 1991 robbery even though he didn’t pull the trigger.
Gov. Kay Ivey on Thursday set a March 12 execution using nitrogen gas for Charles “Sonny” Burton, 75. Burton was convicted as an accomplice in the shooting death of Doug Battle, a customer who was killed during an Aug. 16 robbery that year of an auto parts store in Talladega.
Burton did not shoot Battle and was not in the AutoZone store at the time of the fatal shooting. However, prosecutors depicted him as the ringleader of the robbery and sought a death sentence for him. Derrick DeBruce, the man who fired the gun also was sentenced to death but later had his sentence reduced to life imprisonment and died in prison.
A cross-section of people, including one of the victim’s children and some jurors, had urged the governor to consider clemency for Burton. They argued it would be unfair to execute Burton when the triggerman ended up receiving a lesser sentence.
“We are very disappointed that Governor Ivey has opted to set an execution date for Mr. Burton. But we hope and pray that she, like Oklahoma Governor Stitt did in November, still changes her mind and stops this unjust execution of a man who has never taken a life,” Matt Schulz, Burton’s attorney, said.
In the letter notifying the prison commissioner of the date, Ivey wrote that she has no current plans to grant clemency but maintains the authority to “grant a reprieve or commutation, if necessary, at any time before the execution is carried out.”
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office had opposed the clemency request. His office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
“Burton was convicted of capital murder in April 1992 and the jury unanimously recommended the death penalty. That conviction and sentence have been upheld at every level,” a spokesperson for the office said in an earlier statement.
Schulz noted that in seeking to uphold a death sentence for DeBruce, the state had argued in a 2015 court filing that its would be “arguably unjust” to affirm a death sentence for Burton but not the person who killed Battle.
Ivey has granted clemency once since taking office in 2017.