Alabama Is About to Execute a 75-Year-Old Man Who Didn’t Even Kill Anyone. There’s Still Time to Stop It.
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Alabama plans to execute next week a 75-year-old man who gets around in a wheelchair and wears a padded helmet to protect his head from frequent falls. He also never killed anyone.
His name is Charles “Sonny” Burton, and he was one of six men who robbed the Talladega AutoZone in 1991. Burton had already left the store when one of the robbers, Derrick DeBruce, shot and killed a man named Doug Battle. Although DeBruce was the one who fired the gun, all six men involved in the robbery were sentenced to death. Some took plea deals. DeBruce, however, went to trial and was initially sentenced to death. Burton then appeared in court. Although no one disputed that he was physically outside the AutoZone at the time of the shooting, Burton was also sentenced to death under Alabama’s felony murder statute.
In 2014, the state agreed to sentence DeBruce, the actual shooter, to life in prison without parole. If Burton is executed on March 12, he will be the only person executed in Alabama for Battle’s murder due to leniency for the shooter.
How did Alabama get here? If someone dies while you are committing a felony, the felony murder statute says you can be charged with first-degree murder, regardless of whether you intended to kill them or directly participated in their death. This law covers everyone involved in this crime and holds everyone equally liable under a doctrine called accomplice liability.
Felony murder allows for an incredibly wide criminal network, but it is the law. most states. In one such case, a Florida man named Ryan Holle was sentenced to life in prison for giving his car keys to a friend who committed the robbery in which a woman was killed. However, the Supreme Court has placed some limits on sentencing people to death for capital murder. To receive the death penalty unless you directly killed the victim, you must have been a “substantial” participant in the crime and acted with “reckless indifference to human life.”
“When you combine accomplice liability, felony murder, and the death penalty, it’s a toxic soup,” Maria Kolar, a professor at Oklahoma City University School of Law, told me. “Each has the potential for great injustice.”
Just a few months ago, a nearly identical scenario faced a 46-year-old man in Oklahoma. Treman Tree He was scheduled to be executed after being sentenced to death for decades for capital murder. Like Burton, Wood participated in a robbery. Like Burton, Wood did not kill anyone; It was his brother who both confessed to the murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment, while Tremane was sentenced to death.
Wood did what Burton is doing now: seek clemency, an executive power outside the court system where governors can show mercy by reducing sentencing.
“It’s hard to believe in the process,” Wood told me the day before the clemency hearing. Under Oklahoma law, the pardon and parole board must vote in favor of clemency before the governor makes his final decision. Wood was thinking about what to say to persuade the board to spare his life. Mercy is a defense that is not limited by the structure and procedural limitations of the law. Kolar explained that, besides actual innocence, “disproportionality was the second strongest argument” that convinced pardon boards and governors. That was the argument Wood made, and it’s the argument Burton makes now.
Disproportionate death sentences can be persuasive to those deciding on amnesty and reek of injustice. However, due to a case filed in the Supreme Court in 1984, these are not things the courts will consider. Pulley and Harris. Inside Pulley, Specifically, the court considered whether disproportionate death sentences violated the Constitution. He said no. This means that states have no authority to review whether death sentences are proportionate. It also means that a judge, even if he wanted to, could not order a new trial on the grounds that Wood was sentenced to death while his brother, the real killer, was sentenced to life in prison.
Although there are many constitutional issues that the courts cannot resolve to be Relief commutation—and both Wood’s and Burton’s cases are full of them—is that pardon is the only possible mechanism to correct the particular injustice resulting from disproportionate death sentences. Kolar explained that in many years of death penalty appeals, “there is often no single court that has the knowledge or power to say, ‘This is not fair.'”
“Even though I did not kill this young man for whom I was sentenced to death, I feel a great weight on me,” Wood said the day before the clemency hearing. “I have a lot of regret. It weighs even more that I have to explain this to the board tomorrow.”
After Wood and his attorneys presented their case for Wood’s life to be spared, the Oklahoma Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended clemency by a 3-2 vote. But the final say still belonged to Gov. Kevin Stitt. While awaiting the governor’s decision, Wood was moved to death watch, a special, high-security cell near the execution chamber. He visited with his family and spiritual advisor. The morning of the execution, scheduled for 10 a.m., arrived and there was still no news from the governor. Later, at 9:59 a.m., as Wood prepared to die, Governor Stitt called the prison. Wood would live. When he received the news that he would not be killed, he collapsed.
Wood’s commutation was one of only two pardons granted to prisoners sentenced to death, out of a total of 47 executions in 2025; This was a record year in the United States. The only other governor to accept clemency was Kay Ivey of Alabama, who in February spared the life of Robin Myers due to doubts about his guilt. Ivey is the same governor who will now decide whether to grant that clemency to Charles Burton.
There is no guarantee that he will do this. Alabama has granted clemency in only one death penalty case since 1976, and that was in 1999. Mercy was a consistent safeguard for an often fallible system. Before the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972, governors had granted clemency. Rates like In Texas it is 1 in 5, in Florida it is 1 in 4, and in North Carolina it is 1 in 3. But since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, only 86 individual pardons were granted – 1,659 executions. Today, compassion is not the reliable protection it should be. This is an unpredictable rarity.
But as Burton’s team writes Amnesty petition for IveyBurton’s case is an extreme outlier, “an excellent example of the exercise of executive clemency.” During the 33 years that Burton was on death row, the courts would have to address numerous issues that began at Burton’s trial; First, the jury was given neither video evidence of another defendant corroborating Burton as the ringleader nor instructions that anyone should be harmed during the robbery. But because the courts have not intervened, Burton and his legal team are in the same difficult predicament that Tremane Wood faced: convincing the governor that his execution would be unjust, without discounting his role in the crime that led to Doug Battle’s murder.
One report With Alabama Reflector Last week, Burton said: “Over the years that I’ve suffered through this, I’ve suffered with the guilt that the victim felt, the pain that the victim felt, the pain that the victim’s family felt. And I’m so sorry. I want them to know that I’m so sorry. And if I had the power to bring Mr. Battle back, I would.”
Burton previously apologized to Battle’s family in a public letter, acknowledging that it took a long time and endurance to admit his role in the robbery. He also wrote that the time allowed him to see the pain the Battle family felt from losing loved ones to violence. In return, Battle’s daughter not only forgave Burton, but also an active advocate for his mercy. However, the law is not designed to take into account the wishes of the victim’s family, especially those who oppose the execution.
And Burton has firsthand experience of the Battle family’s pain; Early in his life, his first wife was murdered. Although Burton initially felt deep hatred and anger towards the man who killed his wife, Burton was able to forgive himself when he was released on parole. He decided not to oppose parole, and the man who killed his wife was released from prison.
“There’s a cruel irony about Sonny Burton effectively pardoning the man who killed his wife and letting him out of prison, and yet the state, recognizing that this was unquestionably unjust, still plans to execute Sonny Burton, who didn’t kill anyone,” Burton’s attorney, Matt Schulz, told me.
The clock is ticking. Burton’s execution is planned for Thursday at 18:00. Governor Ivey should pardon Charles Burton. There are many situations in which mercy is appropriate in the arbitrary and capricious system of death penalty. But the cases and lives of Tremane Wood and Charles Burton are cases where mercy is required. Mercy must fix what the courts cannot.
