A man long acknowledged not to have fired the fatal shot in a 1991 killing is scheduled to be put to death this week after spending more than 30 years on death row.
Charles ‘Sonny’ Burton was among six men involved in a robbery at an AutoZone in Talladega, Alabama, an incident that ended with a customer being killed.
According to accounts of the crime, Burton had already stepped outside the store when another participant, Derrick DeBruce, shot Doug Battle in the back, killing him.
Burton has maintained that he never expected anyone to be murdered and says homicide was not part of the plan. Even so, he was sentenced to death under Alabama’s felony murder rules for what happened during the robbery.
DeBruce also initially received a death sentence, but that punishment was later reduced to life without parole. He died while incarcerated in 2020.
Burton’s death sentence, however, remains in place. He is set to be executed by nitrogen gas on Thursday at William C. Holman Correctional Facility, where he is now 75 and has spent decades on death row.
Alabama’s felony murder law “allows for everybody involved in the underlying offense to be treated by the legal system as if they committed an intentional murder”, Nazgol Ghandnoosh, director of research at The Sentencing Project, explained to NBC News.
In Burton’s case, prosecutors pointed to his role in the robbery that preceded Battle’s death. Even without pulling the trigger, the state can still hold him legally responsible for the killing.
Burton has continued to deny any knowledge that a shooting would occur that day.
“I didn’t assist nobody. I didn’t aid nobody. I didn’t tell nobody to shoot nobody,” he said.
While DeBruce has not been disputed as the person who shot Battle, Burton is still facing execution — a result that some are now urging the state to reconsider.
Among those asking for mercy are several jurors from Burton’s original trial, including people who once supported a death sentence but now say it no longer feels appropriate.
Juror Priscilla Townsend told NBC: “The death sentence is too harsh for someone that did not pull the trigger.
“I don’t see him as a bad guy anymore. I was young, and I made a poor decision, as he did in his youth. He made poor choices. I don’t feel he should be sentenced to death for a poor choice.”
Reports say six jurors have signed affidavits urging Alabama Governor Kay Ivey to intervene.
Doug Battle’s daughter, Tori Battle, has also spoken out against carrying out Burton’s execution.
In an op-ed for the Montgomery Advertiser, she wrote: “As a child, I believed justice meant punishment. I hated all six men involved and thought that witnessing executions would bring closure. As I have grown older, I have come to understand that justice is not about vengeance. It is about truth, proportionality, and fairness.
“Mr. Burton remains on death row not because moral clarity demands it, but because procedural rules have blocked courts from correcting past mistakes. When a man’s life turns on technical barriers rather than the truth, that is not justice, but a failure of the system that does nothing to honor my father’s memory.”
Despite the growing calls for clemency, it has been reported that Governor Ivey will not commute Burton’s sentence.
A spokesperson for the Alabama governor told WSFA: “At this time, as previously noted, Governor Ivey has no plans to grant clemency.”