The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Magwood v. Alabama is available in Adobe .pdf format.
"Court overturns death sentence in Coffee County Sheriff's murder," is the AP report via the Dothan Eagle.
A federal appeals court on Monday overturned the death sentence of an Alabama inmate for the 1979 shooting death of a county sheriff.
Billy Joe Magwood, 60, was on death row at Holman Prison in Atmore for more than 30 years for killing Coffee County Sheriff Neil Grantham.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Alabama's law at the time did not make killing a law enforcement officer a death penalty offense. Magwood had argued that the law was later changed to make such a killing an aggravating offense for jurors to use in determining if a death sentence was warranted.
And:
Officials in the Alabama Attorney General's office had not decided Monday if they would appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. Under Alabama law, Magwood's sentence will become life in prison without the possibility of parole if the ruling stands.
According to Alabama Department of Corrections records, Magwood has been on death row since June 30, 1981. The only inmate who has been on death row longer in Alabama is Arthur Lee Giles, who has been there since 1979.
"Alabama cop-killer wins another appeal," by Warren Richey for the Christian Science Monitor.
“Based on a clear reading of Alabama law, we conclude that Magwood was not eligible for the death penalty,” the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals said.
The three-judge panel said Magwood was entitled to receive a new, non-capital sentence because his death sentence violated the fair-warning requirement of the Constitution’s due process clause.
Magwood is one of 198 inmates on Alabama’s death row. He’s been there more than 30 years, longer than all but two other death-row inmates.
The appeals court ruling follows a June 2010, 5-to-4 decision by the US Supreme Court, remanding the Magwood case to the lower courts so he could be resentenced. State prosecutors objected, once again, and appealed to the 11th Circuit.
It was that appeal that the 11th Circuit rejected on Monday.
And:
The problem with his death sentence was that Alabama law required judges to weight aggravating and mitigating circumstances before imposing a death sentence. The law required the sentencing judge to cite which aggravating factor – specifically listed in the Alabama statute – applied to the convicted murderer.
There were no aggravating factors in the statute that applied to Magwood’s circumstances. But by the time of Magwood’s trial in 1981, the Alabama Supreme Court had ruled that the murder of an on-duty sheriff because of his official acts qualified as an aggravation sufficient to justify a death sentence.
The sentencing judge cited the state supreme court’s decision and applied it to Magwood.
In the appeal, Magwood’s lawyers argued that the sentencing judge acted unfairly by relying on a new interpretation of Alabama law in 1981 that did not exist two years earlier in 1979 when Magwood committed his crime.
Earlier coverage of the case begins at the link.
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