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Alabama Set to Execute Nathaniel Woods, Despite Evidence of Innocence

HeadlineMar 05, 2020

In Alabama, tens of thousands of people have written to Governor Kay Ivey, calling on her to halt tonight’s planned execution of Nathaniel Woods, a condemned prisoner who has consistently maintained his innocence. Woods was convicted of capital murder for the shooting deaths of three Birmingham police officers in 2004. Another death row prisoner convicted in the case, Kerry Spencer, said in a confession he was the sole gunman in the killings. The Death Penalty Information Center says Woods’s case was marred by police misconduct, incompetent legal counsel and an Alabama law that allows death verdicts based on nonunanimous votes by a jury. Despite that, Nathaniel Woods is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. this evening at the Holman Prison in southern Alabama. In a letter to Governor Ivey, Martin Luther King III, son of the slain civil rights leader, wrote, “Killing this African American man, whose case appears to have been strongly mishandled by the courts, could produce an irreversible injustice. Are you willing to allow a potentially innocent man to be executed?”

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