Kay Ivey commutes sentence of Charles \u2018Sonny\u2019 Burton, saying death penalty would be unfair as he did not fire the fatal shot<\/p>\n
Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n The governor of Alabama<\/a> commuted the death sentence of a 75-year-old inmate who was set to be executed this week, even though he was not in the building when the victim of the murder he was sentenced for was killed. <\/p>\n Kay Ivey, the Republican governor of the state, reduced Charles \u201cSonny\u201d Burton\u2019s sentence to life in prison without possibility of parole this week. The move marks the second time the governor has granted clemency of a death row inmate since she took office in 2017. <\/p>\n Burton was sentenced to death for the 1991 shooting death of a customer, Doug Battle, during a store robbery. However, another man, Derrick DeBruce, shot Battle after Burton had left the store. <\/p>\n DeBruce\u2019s death sentence was reduced on appeal to life in prison without the possibility of parole. <\/p>\n Ivey said in a statement<\/a> that she could not fairly administer the death penalty to Burton when the man who actually killed Battle was allowed to live.<\/p>\n \u201cI firmly believe that the death penalty is just punishment for society\u2019s most heinous offenders, as shown by the 25 executions I have presided over as governor. In order to ensure the continued viability of the death penalty, however, I also believe that a government\u2019s most consequential action must be administered fairly and proportionately,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kay Ivey commutes sentence of Charles \u2018Sonny\u2019 Burton, saying death penalty would be unfair as he did not fire the fatal shot Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox The governor of Alabama commuted the death sentence of a 75-year-old inmate who was set to be executed … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}