Niamh Shackleton
A man who is widely know to have not been responsbile for the death of another man is set to be executed this week after more than three decades on death row.
Charles 'Sonny' Burton was involved in the 1991 robbery of a Talladega AutoZone — an incident that resulted in someone dying.
Burton was one of six men to raid the retailer. He was already outside the store when one of his accomplices, Derrick DeBruce, fatally shot a customer named Doug Battle in the back.
While Burton wasn't the one to pull the trigger and insists that a murder was never part of their plan, he ended up receiving the death sentence for DeBruce's actions.
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DeBruce was also handed the death sentence, but he later had this overturned and he was given life without parole instead. He died in custody in 2020.
But Burton's death penalty ruling still stands and he's set to be executed by nitrogen gas on Thursday at William C. Holman Correctional Facility, where the 75-year-old has spent more than 30 years on death row.
Alabama's felony murder law 'allows for everybody involved in the underlying offense to be treated by the legal system as if they committed an intentional murder', Nazgol Ghandnoosh, director of research at The Sentencing Project, explained to NBC News.
In this instance, Burton was involved in the burglary that resulted in Battle's death. While he didn't pull the trigger himself, in the state of Alabama he can still be help culpable for the killing.
Speaking to NBC News, Burton insists to this day that he did not know a murder would take place that fateful day in 1991.
"I didn’t assist nobody. I didn’t aid nobody. I didn’t tell nobody to shoot nobody," he said.
No one has disputed that DeBruce was the person responsible for Battle's death, yet Burton still faces execution in the coming days — but people are now trying to have this changed.
Some of those calling for the 75-year-old man's life to be spared are the original jurors who initially sentenced him to death all those years ago.
Juror Priscilla Townsend told NBC: "The death sentence is too harsh for someone that did not pull the trigger.
"I don’t see him as a bad guy anymore. I was young, and I made a poor decision, as he did in his youth. He made poor choices. I don’t feel he should be sentenced to death for a poor choice."
Six jurors have reportedly signed affidavits asking Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to show Burton mercy.
Even Battle's daughter, Tori Battle, has called on Burton's execution to be canceled.
She penned in a moving op-ed for the Montgomery Advertiser: "As a child, I believed justice meant punishment. I hated all six men involved and thought that witnessing executions would bring closure. As I have grown older, I have come to understand that justice is not about vengeance. It is about truth, proportionality, and fairness.
"Mr. Burton remains on death row not because moral clarity demands it, but because procedural rules have blocked courts from correcting past mistakes. When a man’s life turns on technical barriers rather than the truth, that is not justice, but a failure of the system that does nothing to honor my father’s memory."
However, it has been reported that Ivey will not be granting Burton clemency.
A spokesperson for the Alabama governor told WSFA: "At this time, as previously noted, Governor Ivey has no plans to grant clemency."