Alabama Executes Nathaniel Woods
Alabama inmate Nathaniel Woods' execution grabbed headlines yesterday as his supporters believe his case was wrongfully handled.
Woods was put to death by lethal injection Thursday night for his role in the fatal shootings of three Birmingham police officers in 2004, according to an article by NBC News.
His scheduled execution was initially delayed when the U.S. Supreme Court interceded to review his case last-minute, however, the court ultimately declined to intervene.
Amidst protests demanding Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey grant him clemency, the official said she would not impede the execution, sealing Woods' fate.
According to the Alabama Department of Corrections., Woods, 43, was pronounced dead at 9:01 in the evening.
He had no last words but was seen to arrange his hands in a sign of his Islamic faith, according to The Associated Press.
Days prior to the execution, Woods' family and prominent activists rallied on his behalf, holding signature campaigns, raising concerns that his case was mishandled and scrutinizing over Alabama's criminal laws treatment towards black defendants.
Woods' co-defendant, Kerry Spencer, who remains on death row for confessing to being the triggerman denied that Woods was complicit and pleaded to stop his execution.
In an open letter, Spencer wrote, "Nathaniel Woods is 100% innocent. I know that to be a fact because I'm the person that shot and killed all three of the officers that Nathaniel was subsequently charged and convicted of murdering. Nathaniel Woods doesn't even deserve to be incarcerated, much less executed."
The case drew attention from celebrities and activists, including Kim Kardashian West and Martin Luther King III, asking Ivey to step in.
"In the case of Nathaniel Woods, the actions of the U.S. Supreme Court and the Governor of the State of Alabama are reprehensible, and have potentially contributed to an irreversible injustice," King, the son of Martin Luther King Jr., said in a statement after the execution. "It makes a mockery of justice and constitutional guarantees to a fair trial."
In a Wednesday statement, however, state Attorney General Steve Marshall called Woods' punishment just. He took issue with those who said Woods was innocent or that he surrendered to police during the June 2004 drug raid.
"The falsehoods are the descriptors 'surrendered' and 'innocent': Neither apply whatsoever to Nathaniel Woods, whose actions directly caused the deaths of three policemen and injury to another," the statement said. "Justice is set to be carried out tomorrow. The only injustice in the case of Nathaniel Woods is that which was inflicted on those four policemen that terrible day."
Woods was an accomplice, prosecutors say
During Woods' 2005 trial, prosecutors claimed he and Spencer were selling crack cocaine in their Birmingham home.
Police officers were sent serve a misdemeanor warrant, but Woods, then 27 years old, set up an ambush allowing Spencer to shoot at them multiple times, prosecutors said. Said ambush took away the lives of three officers namely Carlos Owen, Harley Chisholm III and Charles Bennett, and injured another identified as Michael Collins.
According to Spencer he only shot the officers in self-defense because they were assaulting Woods, an assertion that the judge did not allow at trial.
Later on, another drug dealer who was present at Woods' home accused two of the officers who were killed of being involved in a bribery.
He claimed they protected dealers in exchange for money, but the Birmingham police declined to comment on the allegation.
Collins said that although Woods didn't fire a weapon, he believed Woods helped plan the shooting. According to him, before the shooting initiated, Woods yelled, "I give up. I give up. Just don't spray me with that mace."
The surviving officer added that "I knew it wasn't Nathaniel" who had shot him.
Prosecutors didn't argue whether who shot the officers but they tagged Woods as an accomplice. A law in Alabama says that even if a person didn't pull the trigger, they are still eligible for the death penalty.
Additionally, Alabama remains the only state in the USA which honors the decision of the jury to impose the death penalty even if it is not unanimous as long as there are least 10 jurors in favor.
Incompetent counsel
Supporters of Woods insist he fell in the hands of an incompetent counsel who failed to conduct proper investigation and missed important deadlines in submitting appeals.
Woods could have benefited from a plea deal of 20 to 25-year prison time, but his ssupporters said he was wrongly informed by his own lawyers.
They also argued that he wouldn't be convicted of capital murder because the state needed to provide sufficient evidence that he pulled the trigger and that he plotted the ambush with Spencer.
"Mr. Woods did not accept this plea deal because he thought - with counsel's encouragement - that he would be acquitted of these charges because the evidence would prove that he was not the shooter that day," according to a petition against his imprisonment.
Since capital punishment was reinstated in Alabama in 1976, Nathaniel Woods was the 67th in the state who faced execution and the first this year.
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