Another Alabama Execution

The next execution in Alabama is scheduled for January 25, when the state plans to execute Kenneth Smith. If carried out, the execution will be the first in the United States to use nitrogen hypoxia.

Smith confessed to the 1988 murder of Elizabeth Sennett and was duly convicted of the crime. Yet his death sentence warrants commutation for reasons beyond philosophical opposition to the death penalty, as advocated in my email to Governor Kay Ivey.

Governor Ivey,

Please commute the death sentence of Kenneth Smith to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

While Mr. Smith confessed and was duly convicted of the murder of Elizabeth Sennett, a jury of his peers recommended a life sentence, 11 to 1. The judge for the case disregarded the jury’s wishes and imposed the death penalty. The use of judicial override has since been repealed by the Alabama legislature, although this grace was not extended to Mr. Smith.

This is not justice and calls for your intervention.

Former Alabama governors Robert Bentley and Don Siegelman, from both political parties, have urged an end to executions where the jury was not unanimous or the judge overruled the jury’s recommendation.

Grace for Mr. Smith is further compelled by the state’s failed attempt to execute him in 2022, now compounded by the planned use of nitrogen hypoxia for this next attempt on January 25. As you well know, Mr. Smith would be the first prisoner in the U.S. to be executed using nitrogen hypoxia, an experimental and unproven procedure that is clearly unusual and arguably cruel.

Commuting Mr. Smith’s death sentence to life would be a tangible application of God’s grace: honoring Elizabeth Sennett and her family while ensuring a just and fair punishment for Kenneth Smith.

Respectfully,

Alabama's Republican Legislators: Obtuse, Recalcitrant, Afraid?

Alabama's legislature recently concluded a special session to redraw Alabama's congressional districts mandated by the federal courts — including a 5–4 decision from the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a state where 27 percent of the residents are Black, the federal government argued — and the argument was supported by the courts — that more than one of the seven congressional districts should be expected to elect a Black representative. Not so. Historically, only one district was configured to elect a Black representative, which the federal government viewed as a violation of the Voting Rights Act.

Agreeing with the federal government, the court ordered the legislature to create

“an additional majority-Black congressional district, or an additional district in which Black voters otherwise have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice.”

Providing further guidance, the judges wrote,

"As the Legislature considers such plans, it should be mindful of the practical reality … that any remedial plan will need to include two districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it."

The legislature's solution, according to the Alabama Reflector:

GOP maps created a new 7th Congressional District in the western Black Belt with a bare majority of Black voters (it ended up at 50.65 percent) and a new 2nd Congressional District in southeast Alabama with a Black population that ranged from 38 to 42 percent.

Rep. Chris Pringle, R-Mobile, who co-chaired the reapportionment committee, said while the district wasn’t majority-Black, Black voters would have the "opportunity" to elect leaders of their choice, according to the Alabama Reflector.

Opportunity doesn't mean the outcome is likely. I can buy a lottery ticket, with the outcome most assuredly the opposite of what I hope. A population that's 38 to 42 percent hardly meets the criteria of "a voting-age majority or something quite close to it."

So it's back to court, the Alabama legislature wasting taxpayer money to defend Jim Crow.

However, my assessment may be too harsh. A thought experiment written by Brian Lyman posits the legislature may be motivated more by the fear of retribution from their hard-core voters than racial bias.

Regardless, Alabama's racial infamy lives on.

Alabama Politics Trumps Transgender Health

This is my first letter to an Alabama politician since we moved to Opelika in November: 

Governor Ivey,

I am distraught by your support of the so-called Alabama Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, which does not provide compassion or protection. Thankfully, Judge Liles Burke’s ruling stopped your misguided and harmful plan to ban puberty blockers and hormones for minors with gender dysphoria. His injunction provided ample justification for the ruling:

”the uncontradicted record evidence is that at least twenty-two major medical associations in the United States endorse transitioning medications as well-established, evidence-based treatments for gender dysphoria in minors.”

Further, your Tweet claiming knowledge of God’s intentions reveals hubris, a lack of knowledge of gender dysphoria, callous indifference for the mental health challenges faced by children with gender dysphoria, and disregard for parental rights — which I thought was a bedrock principle of Republicans. It’s really not simple.

"we’re going to go by how God made us: if the Good Lord made you a boy, you’re a boy, and if he made you a girl, you’re a girl. It’s simple."

For the health of the transgender youth of Alabama, I urge you to get to know several families with transgender youth and meet with the medical community to become more informed. It may not make for great election year politics, but it’s the principled step to take.

Respectfully,