Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has set a March execution date for Charles “Sonny” Burton, a 75-year-old man convicted in the fatal shooting of an auto parts store customer during a 1991 robbery in Talladega, Alabama, the Associated Press reported. Ivey scheduled the execution for March 12 and said it would be carried out using nitrogen gas, according to the AP report.
Burton was sentenced to death despite claims that he did not personally shoot Doug Battle. According to the AP, Burton was convicted as an accomplice in the killing that occurred on Aug. 16, 1991, during a robbery at an AutoZone store, and prosecutors at the time depicted him as the ringleader.
The AP said jurors and supporters later urged clemency, including at least one of the victim’s children and some jurors. Burton’s attorney, Matt Schulz, argued that executing Burton would be unfair because the triggerman received a lesser outcome. “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,” Schulz said, according to the AP.
In a letter notifying the prison commissioner of the scheduled date, Ivey wrote that she has no current plans to grant clemency. The AP reported that Ivey told the commissioner that she maintains the authority to “grant a reprieve or commutation, if necessary, at any time before the execution is carried out.”
The AP said Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office opposed the clemency request. A spokesperson for the office previously said Burton was convicted of capital murder in April 1992 and that the jury unanimously recommended the death penalty, and that Burton’s conviction and sentence had been upheld at every level, according to the AP. The office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment, the AP reported.
Schulz also pointed to how the state argued during earlier litigation about disparity between Burton and Derrick DeBruce, the man who fired the gun. The AP reported that DeBruce was also sentenced to death, but later had his sentence reduced to life imprisonment and died in prison. The AP further reported that Schulz noted a 2015 court filing in which the state argued it would be “arguably unjust” to affirm Burton’s death sentence while leaving DeBruce’s death sentence at a different outcome.
Ivey has granted clemency once since taking office in 2017, the AP reported. With the March execution date now set, the case moves into a new phase of last-resort review, even as the state maintains that the sentence has survived every level of legal challenge.