Albert Mack was sentenced to death by the State of Alabama for the murder of a man. According to court documents Mack would fatally shoot the victim who was then placed into the back of a car and set on fire. Albert Mack would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Albert Mack 2022 Information
Inmate:
MACK, ALBERT III
AIS:
0000Z595
Institution:
HOLMAN PRISON
Albert Mack More News
The Alabama Supreme Court on Friday ruled against the state in an appeal about jury information in a Tuscaloosa County capital murder case.
Albert Mack III was convicted in 1995 of capital murder in the shooting death of Patrick Holman. Holman’s body was found July 13, 1993, in the trunk of a partly burned car on Sanders Ferry Road.
Mack had sought demographic information for Tuscaloosa County from 1978-1995 to determine if the grand and petit juries in his case adequately reflected the racial makeup of the county.
Mack asked for the information in a post-conviction appeal based on the alleged ineffectiveness of his attorney. Mack said his attorney failed to challenge the alleged underrepresentation of blacks on the juries.
Mack asked the Court of Criminal Appeals to order access to the information. The state appealed the Court of Criminal Appeals’ affirmative ruling.
The Supreme Court ruled against the state in Friday’s 6-2 ruling.
Mack’s conviction and death sentence already have been upheld by the Supreme Court. Friday’s ruling was over a post-conviction appeal.
In March, a Tuscaloosa judge ordered the circuit clerk to produce jury venire lists from 1978-95 but only two lists produced contained information regarding the race and gender of the jury pools.
The attorney general’s office, which handles death penalty cases, said it had no immediate comment.
James Largin was sentenced to death by the State of Alabama for the murders of his parents. According to court documents Largin would go to his parents home where he would rob them of money and credit cards before fatally shooting them. James Largin would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
James Largin 2022 Information
Inmate:
LARGIN, JAMES SCOTT
AIS:
0000Z765
Institution:
HOLMAN PRISON
James Largin More News
James Scott Largin’s murder convictions in the 2007 killings of his parents in Tuscaloosa were upheld Friday by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, Attorney General Luther Strange said Monday.
Largin, 46, was sentenced to death by a Tuscaloosa County judge in 2009, murdered his parents, Jimmy, 68, and Peggy, 56. Before shooting them, he stole their cash and credit cards to purchase crack cocaine, Strange said.
Largin, who was 35 at the time of the killings, allegedly told police investigators that the deaths weren’t “murder … not in the cold-blooded sense,” according to the Alabama attorney general.
He was arrested after University of Alabama police found his parents’ car near the campus a few days after the murders, the Associated Press reported at the time.
Largin was appealing his conviction, and among the testimonies the appeals court heard from were fellow inmates who said the Tuscaloosa man confessed to them that he killed his parents.
A prosecutor at Largin’s original trial said Largin showed no remorse over the murders. The judge agreed with the jury’s recommendation that Largin be given the death penalty. His defense attorneys argued for life in prison without parole
Toforest Johnson was sentenced to death by the State of Alabama for the murder of a police officer. According to court documents Toforest Johnson would fatally shoot a Birmingham Sheriff Deputy who was working an off duty security position. Even though Toforest Johnson had a solid alibi for the night of the murder he was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death.
Toforest Johnson 2022 Information
Inmate:
JOHNSON, TOFOREST ONESHA
AIS:
0000Z651
Institution:
HOLMAN PRISON
Toforest Johnson More News
Toforest Johnson was 25 years old when he was sentenced to death in 1998 for the killing of a sheriff’s deputy outside Birmingham, Ala. His oldest daughter, Shanaye Poole, now 29, remembers being in the courtroom.
“I just wanted to talk to him. He looked so handsome. He had a suit on. And of course, I didn’t really know what was going on. I may have been 4 or 5 years old at the time,” she says. “I saw him walk away, and that was the last day of his freedom.”
Ever since, Johnson has maintained his innocence, and his family has worked to overturn what they see as a wrongful conviction. Now they have help in their fight. A new district attorney in Jefferson County, Ala., looked back and determined Johnson deserves a new trial.
And other prominent legal voices — including former prosecutors — are getting behind the push to reexamine the case, which is one of dozens getting a new look as district attorneys around the U.S. review the integrity of past prosecutions.
“The records that the courts have say there is no way you can take a man’s life based on what you have,” says Antonio Green, Johnson’s cousin who lived with him when he was arrested in the murder of Jefferson County Sheriff’s Deputy William Hardy. The deputy was shot to death while working an off-duty security detail at a hotel in 1995. Both Johnson and the victim were Black.
It was a high-profile case, with few clues and no eyewitnesses. The state put up a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction.
Johnson became one of the suspects based on a tip from a teenager who later admitted she was after the reward money and changed her story dozens of times.
In a series of trials, prosecutors raised conflicting theories in court as to who the shooter was. Defense witnesses gave Johnson an alibi. After a hung jury, Johnson was prosecuted a second time and convicted based on the testimony of one person — not an eyewitness but an ear witness — a woman who said she overheard a jailhouse phone conversation in which someone named Toforest said he shot a deputy.
Green, who says he supports the death penalty, still can’t understand how his cousin was convicted of capital murder.
“They had no evidence, no reason, no justifiable reason, to say this is our man,” Green says.
Johnson’s daughter agrees.
“There was no evidence pointing to him in the first place,” Poole says. “It really opened my eyes to the fact that, unfortunately, the justice system is not equal.”
Johnson’s court-appointed defense attorney failed to call alibi witnesses in the second trial. Also, prosecutors never revealed that the ear witness got the $5,000 reward for her testimony, records of which had been misfiled until 2019. That’s now the basis for Johnson’s legal claim to have his conviction overturned. It’s before a state appeals court. Johnson’s attorney declined be to interviewed, given the ongoing litigation.
But a broader legal groundswell is underway after the Jefferson County district attorney filed a motion for a new trial last summer. Poole says finally the right people are listening.
“We have some very powerful and influential people that have rallied behind my family and my father,” Poole says. “So we are very hopeful that we will be able to bring him home.”
Among the influential voices calling for justice is former Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley, who worked in the 1970s to have the death penalty reinstated. His son, also a lawyer, asked him to look at Johnson’s case. Baxley says at first he was skeptical; then he read the documents.
“I couldn’t believe what I was reading,” Baxley says. “It was just unconscionable for this to stand.”
Baxley says he was stunned by the lack of evidence against Johnson and how the state had pushed five separate theories of how the murder occurred by four different shooters. And then the ear witness — Baxley says overhearing a phone confession is shaky.
“This lady that testified to that had never met Toforest Johnson. She had never heard him speak,” Baxley says. “She didn’t, as we used to say when I was young in Alabama, didn’t know him from Adam’s house cat.”
Baxley and other former state and federal prosecutors have joined in a friend of the court brief to intervene in the case.
“It’s terrible that he’s been on death row all these years,” he says. “But there’s still the time to correct the injustice.”
And it’s not only prosecutors weighing in. Former judges filed a brief calling the case a “reprehensible miscarriage of justice that may otherwise lead to the execution of a likely innocent man.” Signatories include two former chief justices of Alabama’s Supreme Court.
There’s a brief from legal scholars, another from faith-based groups and yet another from public defenders and the criminal defense bar. All are represented by some of Alabama’s most prestigious law firms.
“This is extraordinarily unusual,” says University of Alabama law professor Joyce White Vance. She’s a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama who signed on the prosecutors’ brief.
We are, I think, living through a moment in time where people have come to realize that our criminal justice system is not perfect,” Vance says.
More and more district attorneys are looking back with a new racial justice lens and using conviction integrity units to make sure prior convictions stand up. Vance says since 2002 those units have processed more than 400 cases where people were wrongfully convicted.
“Most of the time, law enforcement gets it right. Most prosecutors are fine people who are committed to fairness and justice,” Vance says. “But it’s clear that there are some flaws in the system, and it’s our obligation to correct those.”
Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr had promised during his campaign to establish a conviction integrity unit. The Johnson case was among the first to get reexamined. Carr declined an interview with NPR.
“That was a very significant bombshell filing,” Boney says. “The courts that now have jurisdiction over this case ought to take notice that there’s something here.”
He says that in a months-long review, Carr met with witnesses, the victim’s family and the lead prosecutor on the case from the 1990s. What’s striking from Carr’s brief is that he says the original prosecutor has concerns about the case and supports the motion for a new trial.
No one seems to have a clear explanation as to why prosecutors pursued Johnson despite the tenuous evidence, other than perhaps it was a rush to get justice for a fallen officer.
“I do think that the system wanted someone to pay for this terrible crime,” says Green. “You plug in the name. And he just happened to be the name that was plugged in.”
Green says Hardy’s family deserves answers too.
“In order to give them true justice, this injustice has to be undone,” Green says.
More broadly, the legitimacy of the judicial system is at stake, says Boney. With all the support coming from all corners of Alabama’s legal community, he doesn’t see why the state of Alabama continues to fight Johnson’s death row appeals.
“It really is a case where the state should step back,” Boney says.
But Attorney General Steve Marshall — Alabama’s top law enforcement officer — is fighting Johnson’s appeal, arguing the conviction should not be thrown out on the basis that prosecutors withheld the fact that reward money was paid to the sole witness in the case. Marshall declined to be interviewed for this story. A spokesman says the attorney general’s office has not yet taken a position on all the briefs seeking a new trial, because those legal filings are on hold until the reward money disclosure issue is resolved.
Poole keeps old photographs that show her playing with her father when she was a toddler. In one, her dad has squeezed his grown body into a child’s backyard play set.
“Look at this when you can just see the joy on his face,” Poole says. “I love that picture of him.”
Johnson is now 48 years old and has been on Alabama’s death row for nearly half his life. His five children are grown and have children of their own. Poole says they maintained their bond through family prison visits and lots of phone calls and letters.
“He just never missed a birthday,” she says. “I have a stack of cards from him.”
Poole says even after all these years, her dad has not given up on the justice system and tries to keep a positive mindset.
“He says, ‘Princess, I wake up and I see 14 bars every day. But that just reminds me that I made it to the next day,’ ” she says of their conversations.
She’s optimistic they’re at last getting the traction they need to clear his name.
“My hope is that Toforest Johnson will be the reason why the next man won’t have to go through two decades behind bars for something that he or she didn’t do,” Poole says.
Her father’s case is not an anomaly, she says, but a symptom of a system that needs repair.
Joe James was sentenced to death by the State of Alabama for the murder of a woman. According to court documents James went to the place where his ex girlfriend was staying and questioned her about who she was dating. An argument broke out and Joe James would shoot and kill the woman. Joe James would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Joe James 2022 Information
Inmate:
JAMES, JOE NATHAN JR
AIS:
0000Z610
Institution:
HOLMAN PRISON
Joe James More News
The facts surrounding Hall’s murder are essential to our review of James’s claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. The State’s evidence at James’s 1999 trial tended to show that on August 15, 1992, James shot and killed Hall. Tammy Sneed testified that she and Hall had been out shopping and were returning to Sneed’s apartment on August 15, 1992, when they noticed that James, whom Hall had dated, was following them in a vehicle. They parked at the apartment complex and Hall ran into Sneed’s apartment. Bridget Gregory, a neighbor of Sneed’s, testified that she saw them arrive and that she, Sneed, and Hall went to Sneed’s apartment to talk about what to do about James. James had been following Hall since the two had stopped dating. After some discussion Gregory decided to go to her apartment and telephone the police. Sneed did not have a telephone in her apartment. Gregory said that when she opened the door to Sneed’s apartment James pushed past her and entered the apartment armed with a pistol. She said that James confronted Hall about the man she had been out with the night before. Hall begged James to put the gun down because there were children in the apartment. Gregory testified that James pointed the gun at Hall, that he shot her, and that when Hall fell to the floor James shot her again. James then ran out the back door of the apartment. Sneed also testified that she witnessed James shoot Hall.
An Alabama inmate convicted of killing his former girlfriend decades ago was executed Thursday night despite pleas from the victim’s family to spare his life.
Joe Nathan James Jr. received a lethal injection at a south Alabama prison after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his request for a stay. Officials said he was was pronounced dead at 9:27 p.m. after the start of execution was delayed by nearly three hours.
Joe James, 50, was convicted and sentenced to death in the 1994 shooting death of Faith Hall, 26, in Birmingham. Hall’s daughters have said they would rather James serve life in prison, but Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said Wednesday that she planned to let the execution proceed.
Prosecutors said Joe James briefly dated Hall and he became obsessed after she rejected him, stalking and harassing her for months before killing her. On Aug. 15, 1994, after Hall had been out shopping with a friend, James forced his way inside the friend’s apartment, pulled a gun from his waistband and shot Hall three times, according to court documents.
Hall’s two daughters, who were 3 and 6 when their mother was killed, said they wanted James to serve life in prison instead of being executed. The family members not attend the execution.
“Today is a tragic day for our family. We are having to relive the hurt that this caused us many years ago,” the statement issued through state Rep. Juandalynn Givan’s office read. Givan was a friend of Hall’s.
“We hoped the state wouldn’t take a life simply because a life was taken and we have forgiven Mr. Joe Nathan James Jr. for his atrocities toward our family. … We pray that God allows us to find healing after today and that one day our criminal justice system will listen to the cries of families like ours even if it goes against what the state wishes,” the family’s statement read.
Ivey said Thursday that she always deeply considers the feelings of the victim’s family and loved ones, but “must always fulfill our responsibility to the law, to public safety and to justice.”
“Faith Hall, the victim of repetitive harassment, serious threats and ultimately, cold-blooded murder, was taken from this earth far too soon at the hands of Joe Nathan James, Jr. Now, after two convictions, a unanimous jury decision and nearly three decades on death row, Mr. James has been executed for capital murder, and justice has been served for Faith Hall.
She said the execution sends an,” unmistakable message was sent that Alabama stands with victims of domestic violence.”
The execution began a few minutes after 9 p.m. CDT following a nearly three hour delay. James did not open his eyes or show any deliberate movements at any point during the procedure. He did not speak when the warden asked if he had any final words. His breathing became labored, with deep pulsing breaths, and slowed until it was not visible.
Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm, responding to a question about why the execution was delayed, said the state is, “very deliberate in our process in making sure everything goes according to plan.” He did not elaborate. Hamm also said James, who showed no movements at any point, was not sedated.
The execution took place at a prison that houses the state’s death row. An inmate put signs in a cell window calling the execution a “murder.”
A Jefferson County jury first convicted James of capital murder in 1996 and voted to recommend the death penalty, which a judge imposed. The conviction was overturned when a state appeals court ruled a judge had wrongly admitted some police reports into evidence. James was retried and again sentenced to death in 1999, when jurors rejected defense claims that he was under emotional duress at the time of the shooting.
James acted as his own attorney in his bid to stop his execution, mailing handwritten lawsuits and appeal notices to the courts from death row. A lawyer filed the latest appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court on his behalf Wednesday. But the request for a stay was rejected about 30 minutes before the execution was set to begin.
James asked justices for a stay, noting the opposition of Hall’s family and arguing that Alabama did not give inmates adequate notice of their right to select an alternate execution method. He also argued that Ivey’s refusal violates religious freedom laws because the Koran and the Bible “place the concept of forgiveness paramount in this situation.”
The state argued that James waited too late to begin trying to postpone his execution and “should not be rewarded for his transparent attempt to game the system.”
Joe James was sentenced to death for the murder of a woman
When Is Joe James Execution
Joe James execution took place in July 2022
Joe James Execution
Alabama inmate Joe Nathan James Jr. was executed Thursday nightfor the 1994 murder of Faith Hall Smith, the state’s top attorney said, despite pleas from the victim’s family not to do so.
“Justice has been served. Joe James was put to death for the heinous act he committed nearly three decades ago: the cold-blooded murder of an innocent young mother, Faith Hall,” Attorney General Steve Marshall said Thursday in a news release.
James’ time of death was 9:27 p.m. local time Thursday and he was executed by lethal injection, according to a news release from the state’s corrections department.
On Thursday, James did not make any special requests, had no visitors and had three phone calls with attorneys, the state’s corrections department added.
James was convicted and sentenced to death for fatally shooting 26-year-old Smith, whom he had dated in the early 1990s.
Earlier this week, Smith’s daughter, Terrlyn Hall, told CNN affiliate WBMA that the family hoped James would be sentenced to life in prison without parole instead.
“She was a loving, forgiving person,” Hall said of her mother. “I’m quite sure if she was here today, or if she were in this situation, she would want to forgive.”
“We don’t think (execution) is called for because it won’t bring her back,” she added.
Helvetius Hall, Smith’s brother, also pushed for a prison sentence instead of death
“He did a horrible thing,” he told the local news outlet. “He has suffered enough and I don’t think that taking his life is gonna make our life any better.”
The execution happened after more than 25 years of legal appeals in James’ case.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey in a statement said Hall was “the victim of repetitive harassment, serious threats and ultimately, cold-blooded murder” by James.
“Tonight, a fair and lawful sentence was carried out, and an unmistakable message was sent that Alabama stands with victims of domestic violence,” Ivey said. CNN has reached out to the governor for further comment.
James and Smith had a “volatile” relationship, according to a US Court of Appeals filing summarizing the case. After they broke up, he stalked and harassed her, went to her home uninvited and threatened to kill her and her ex-husband, the filing detailed. In 1994, he followed her to a friend’s home and then shot her three times, killing her, the filing states.
A jury in Jefferson County found him guilty of Smith’s murder and recommended the death penalty in 1996, but the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the conviction based on erroneous admission of hearsay evidence, the appeals court states.
Before the retrial, James’ legal team arranged a plea deal with prosecutors in which he’d receive life in prison in exchange for a guilty plea, but James rejected that plan, the filing states
“James explained that he had it pretty good on death row — he had his own room, his own television that he could control to watch what he wanted, and plenty of reading material,” the filing says. “He did not have to worry about being attacked by other prisoners, because he was always one-on-one with the guards.”
At the retrial, a jury again convicted James of capital murder and sentenced him to death in 1999, and appeals courts have affirmed the decision. In 2020, the US Court of Appeals upheld the conviction and rejected James’ claim of ineffective counsel.
A motion to stay his execution was denied by the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on Tuesday.
The state of Alabama last executed a man in January after the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to overturn a lower-court ruling to block the execution. Matthew Reeves, who had been convicted of the robbery and killing of Willie Johnson in 1996, was executed less than two hours later.
Alabama currently has 166 people on death row. The state’s next planned execution is for Alan Eugene Miller on September 22, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Shonelle Jackson was sentenced to death by the State of Alabama for the murder of a man during a robbery. According to court documents Shonelle Jackson and three other men would cut off another car in order to rob it. A gunfire broke out and the victim was shot and killed. Shonelle Jackson and the three other men were arrested and convicted. Shonelle Jackson was the only one sentenced to death. Tons of problems with this case
Shonelle Jackson 2022 Information
Inmate:
JACKSON, SHONELLE ANDRE
AIS:
0000Z643
Institution:
HOLMAN PRISON
Shonelle Jackson More News
In the spring of 1997, four young men in a car near Montgomery, Ala., cut off a second vehicle with two men inside, intending to rob them. During a brief gun fight, the driver of the second car was killed. Prosecutors charged all four men in the first car with capital murder, but only one received a death sentence. How Shonelle Jackson was singled out raises — yet again — troubling questions about the fairness of the death penalty, and especially about Alabama’s peculiarly arbitrary judicial override system.
Alabama is one of three states that allow judges to second-guess a jury’s recommendation of life in prison and change it to a death sentence. Delaware and Florida also allow overrides, but they happen only rarely. In Alabama, 36 of the nearly 200 people on death row were sent there by judges overriding juries, according to a recent examination of the practice by the New Yorker. (In California, the jury decides, but a judge can reduce a death sentence to life without parole.)
In the Jackson case, a 12-member jury voted unanimously in 1998 for a life sentence rather than execution, in part because of evidence that the fatal bullet came from another defendant’s gun. But invoking “judicial discretion,” Judge William Gordon changed the sentence to death based on aggravating factors. One of the factors cited by the judge — who also acknowledged that Jackson might not have been the killer — was that he had declined to accept a plea bargain, thereby failing to take responsibility for his actions. So much for innocent until proven guilty. The other three men, friends before the shootout, received lighter sentences because they testified against Jackson, who knew them only in passing. One was sentenced to life; the other two come up for parole in 2015 and 2017.
Despite misgivings expressed in dissents, the Supreme Court has affirmed Alabama’s use of judicial discretion in other cases. But that the practice is legal doesn’t make it right. According to the state’s Equal Justice Initiative, Alabama judges, who are elected rather than appointed, use the override inconsistently. Some use it more often against black defendants, some judges use it more than others, some counties use it more than others. Judges also invoke it more often in the lead-up to elections, apparently to show that they are tough on crime.
This page has been steady in its opposition to the death penalty. But if states are going to embrace such barbarism, they must respect the individual rights guaranteed under the Constitution, including its 8th Amendment protection against arbitrary punishment. It’s one thing for an elected judge to be “tough on crime.” It’s something entirely different when the judge overrules a jury’s call for leniency and imposes a death sentence.
Shonelle Jackson was sentenced to death for a murder committed during a robbery
When Is Shonelle Jackson Execution
Shonelle Jackson execution has yet to be scheduled
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