Alabama Death Penalty Statistics:
Total on Death Row: 203
- Males: African American: 95, White: 100, Other: 3
- Females: African American: 2, White: 3
Executions in Alabama since 1976:
Exonerations:
- 8 men were found to have been wrongfully convicted and were released from death row.
- Post conviction DNA legislation passed in 2009 contains many caveats, which will make it even harder to obtain testing.
Inadequate Counsel:
- Alabama has no Public Defenders office. Over half of Alabama’s death row prisoners were represented by appointed attorneys, who under state law, could only be paid $1000 for the time they spent preparing for trial.
- After sending an individual to death row, Alabama provides no state funding for post-conviction legal defense. There are nearly a dozen death row prisoners who currently have no legal representation.
Racial Bias:
- Almost 49% of death row inmates are people of color.
- Nearly 80% of the people on Alabama’s death row have been condemned for crimes involving white victims, despite the fact that 65% of all homicide victims in Alabama are black.
- In two dozen death penalty cases, courts have found that Alabama prosecuturs have illegally excluded African Americans from jury service through racially discriminatory jury selection procedures.
Facts:
- Alabama has the largest per capita death row population.
- 25% are on death row because a judge overrode the jury and this practice continues to the present.
- In the last several years, Alabama has sentenced more people to death than any other state.
- At a time when the number of death sentences nationwide is steadily declining, in 2006 the number of people sentenced to death in Alabama increased 16.6%
- Alabama has no legislation that addresses recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court on juveniles and mental retardation.
