BIRMINGHAM, AL – The State of Alabama owes the accused a retrial that Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr supported because the case was so flawed, yet the prosecution has taken a position of complete disregard, reports Doug Jones and Bill Baxley, in an Opinion piece in Birmingham Real Time News this month.
The BRTN noted, “Doug Jones is a former U.S. Senator from Alabama and served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 1997 to 2001, and Bill Baxley served as Alabama’s Attorney General from 1971 to 1979 and as the Lieutenant Governor of Alabama from 1983 to 1987. Both are still active trial lawyers, and both recently joined an amicus brief on behalf of former Alabama prosecutors in support of a new trial for the accused.”
Jones and Baxley, in Birmingham Real Time News. state the accused has spent the past 26 years on Alabama’s death row after being sentenced for a murder they claim he did not commit.
The former District Attorney (Jeff Wallace), who originally prosecuted the accused in 1998, DA Carr, and his office were seeking to overturn the accused’s conviction, claim Jones and Baxley, adding the case “disintegrated.”
Jones and Baxley cited the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing as an example. That incident killed four young girls in Birmingham in 1963, and authorities never seriously investigated the case, explained Jones and Baxley, adding FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover even closed the FBI investigation without bringing any charges.
Over the next three decades, Jones and Baxley continue, those three men were brought to justice.
In 1970, Baxley was elected Attorney General of Alabama, and reopened the investigation of the bombing, and in 1977, Robert Chambliss, also known as “Dynamite Bob,” was convicted of the first-degree murder of 11-year-old Denise McNair and sentenced to life in prison, Jones and Baxley explained.
Decades later, Jones and Baxley continue, the cases of the remaining attackers were opened.
Jones and Baxley said Jones, U.S Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, obtained convictions for Thomas Edwin Blanton, Jr., and Bobby Frank Cherry. They were each sentenced to life in prison.
As Jones and Baxley stated, “In the case of the church bombing, the mistake was not to prosecute,” and sometimes, the mistake is the conviction of an innocent person.
Jones and Baxley wrote in the Birmingham Real Time News Op-Ed the accused’s case was “riddled with mistakes.” The accused, in 1998, was sentenced to death for the murder of Jefferson County Sheriff’s Deputy William Hardy, but in 2020, DA Carr spent nearly nine months reviewing the facts and such review revealed serious issues in the accused’s conviction.
The State’s star witness was secretly paid $5,000 for her testimony, and credible alibi witnesses stated that the accused was across town at the time of the murder, claim Jones and Baxley.
With the support of Jeff Wallace, Jones and Baxley detailed in their Opinion Piece that DA Carr concluded the accused’s case was “so flawed” that the interest of justice demanded a new trial.
However, as Jones and Baxley further shared, the State had taken the position to completely disregard DA Carr’s investigation, and even argued DA Carr “‘acted outside the scope of his duties’” by conducting the review.
According to Jones and Baxley, the integrity of the criminal justice system depends on prosecutors being able to speak out when they believe a miscarriage of justice has occurred. And that, if anything, public policy should demand that prosecutors be required to speak out when they see a case where an injustice had occurred.
Jones and Baxley wrap up their Birmingham Real Time News Op Ed by asserting they believe the evidence in the accused’s case raises serious doubts on the accused’s guilt, and they are troubled by the State’s efforts to proceed with his execution.
