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U.S. Supreme Court Halts Execution of Alabama Man

The U.S. Supreme Court has asked the Department of Corrections to temporarily delay Thomas Arthur's execution as they review his pending appeals.

By Brian Lyman

The U.S. Supreme Court has asked the Department of Corrections to temporarily delay Thomas Arthur's execution as they review his pending appeals.

Arthur's was set for 6 p.m.  Bob Horton, an ADOC spokesman, said the higher court would have issued a temporary stay had ADOC declined to delay the execution. The DOC initially moved the execution to 8 p.m., but the hour came and went without any word from the nation's highest court.

On Wednesday evening, a divided three-judge panel in U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Arthur's final appeal, which challenged the constitutionality of Alabama's death penalty protocol. Arthur's attorneys appealed to SCOTUS to review the 11th Circuit's decision. Horton said Supreme Court Justices requested the delay to allow review of Judge Charles Wilson's dissent in the Court's denial.

Two hours before Arthur's scheduled execution, medical professionals and ethicists filed a brief in support of Arthur's argument with the U.S. Supreme Courts.

In a separate appeal, the Alabama death row inmate also asked SCOTUS to issue a stay on grounds that the state's sentencing scheme is unconstitutional.

Attorneys for Arthur, convicted in a 1982 murder-for-hire scheme, cited the court's decision in Hurst v. Florida earlier this year, which struck down Florida's method of sentencing people to death. In that system, similar to Alabama's, the jury made recommendations on a sentence, but the judge ultimately weighed the factors on it. Alabama allows judges to override juries' recommendations on capital punishment.

The Alabama Supreme Court in September, however, upheld the state's capital sentencing method.

"It is critical that that constitutionality of Alabama's capital sentencing statute . . . be clarified by this Court," the attorneys' brief to the court said. "Additionally, Mr. Arthur's case (and numerous other pending cases) raise the important question of whether Hurst applies retroactively to permit condemned inmates no longer on direct appeal to have their constitutional right to a jury trial vindicated."

The office of the Attorney General has since filed a response asking SCOTUS not to issue a stay. In part, the state argues that Arthur's sentence was constitutional because Arthur specifically requested the jury to sentence him to death.

"Both the jury and judge obliged Arthur's request. Having asked for his current sentence, Arthur cannot now claim error," the State's brief reads.

The appeal represents Arthur's last chance to avoid execution. Arthur, who had been sentenced to life in prison in 1977 after being convicted of murdering the sister of his common law wife, was later convicted of murdering Muscle Shoals engineer Troy Wicker.  But it took three trials to reach that result: Arthur's first two convictions were overturned.

Arthur maintains his innocence, and his attorneys have noted no physical evidence connected him with Wicker's murder and pressed for advanced DNA testing they said could exonerate him. Convicted a third time in December 1991, Arthur requested the death sentence, saying it would help with his appeals.

The jury recommended death, but according to Arthur's attorneys, there was one dissenting vote on the jury panel, and the presiding judge ultimately found a single aggravating factor in Arthur's imprisonment, and a mitigating factor in the fact that those alleged to have helped Arthur were not prosecuted. The judge ultimately ruled the aggravating factor outweighed the mitigating one, and imposed the death sentence.

Arthur's attorneys argue that allowing the judge the final authority in determining a sentence violates Hurst, and said the high court needed to determine if the decision applied retroactively.

(c)2016 the Montgomery Advertiser (Montgomery, Ala.)

Caroline Cournoyer is GOVERNING's senior web editor.
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