Alabama Governor Commutes Death Sentence Of 75-Year-Old Charles 'Sonny' Burton, Who Never Killed Anyone
HuffPost
Had the execution gone forward, Burton would have faced a harsher punishment than the man who killed the victim during a botched robbery that Burton participated in.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) on Tuesday commuted the death sentence of a 75-year-old man who, by the government’s own admission, never killed anyone.
Charles “Sonny” Burton, an accomplice in a 1991 robbery that ended with a fatal shooting, was scheduled to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia on Thursday. Ivey reduced his sentence to life without the possibility of parole, marking only the second time she has commuted a death sentence since entering office in 2017.
Had the killing gone forward, Burton would have faced a harsher punishment than the man convicted of shooting the victim. Six of the eight living jurors wrote letters to Ivey indicating they had no opposition to Burton’s clemency, and three specifically requested his death sentence be commuted. The victim’s daughter also asked the governor to grant mercy. Burton, who has apologized for his role in the crime, is currently in poor health. He uses a wheelchair and wears a padded helmet to protect himself from frequent falls.
Like most people sentenced to death, Burton was subjected to extreme violence before committing the crime that landed him on death row. Burton was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1950, and his parents divorced young. He went to live with his father, who “abused him all the time,” his younger sister Sheila Ford said in a video prepared for his clemency application. After a particularly brutal beating, Burton hid from his father in a closet for three days, Ford said. Burton started living on his own when he was about 15, and would go on to spend most of his life in and out of prison. While Burton was in prison for a conviction unrelated to the robbery that landed him on death row, his wife and her friend were fatally stabbed.
In the summer of 1991, Burton, four other men and a 16-year-old boy robbed an AutoZone in Talladega. After Burton exited the store, one of the men, Derrick DeBruce, fatally shot a man named Doug Battle.
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