According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there are currently 202 people on death row.
The Death Penalty Information Center also says that Alabama has had a total of 55 executions since 1976: six in 2010 and six in 2011 as the most current.
Ryan Hamilton-Schumacher, Auburn alumnus of '07, lives in Birmingham and is against the death penalty.
Hamilton-Schumacher said he became more aware of the issue at the end of his undergrad time at Auburn after reading a book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a theologian in Nazi, Germany, titled: "The Cost of Discipleship."
"It was sort of a belief I held when I didn't realize there was a term associated with it," Hamilton-Schumacher said.
The son of a retired Air Force colonel, Hamilton-Schumacher moved to Alabama when he was 18 and said he immediately recognized the strong Pro-Life movement in the state. Yet he said felt the strong undercurrent of pro-life was inconsistent, only stating life as sacred depending on circumstances.
Hamilton said he saw Alabama's views as inconsistent
"Life is sacred to a point," Hamilton-Schumacher said of what he saw in Alabama's views.
While Hamilton-Schumacher said he feels life in prison is a far better alternative than capital punishment, he feels that even beyond that, the judicial system could be restored to deal with crime at a deeper level.
"Our analogy is you lock people up, and then in 'x' amount of years, you go free," Hamilton-Schumacher said. "So what did that do? That's not restoring brokenness. That's not helping someone get better."
He believes the system could be helped by restorative, rather than punitive justice.
Under restorative justice, individuals may be worked with to determine why they committed the crime and what tendencies they have towards repetition.
Shelley Douglass, runs Mary's House Catholic Worker, a place in Birmingham that shelters homeless people, and said she has been involved in peace movements and even the civil rights movement since the 1960s and partners with any organization who is committed to ending capital punishment.
Douglass said she saw the face of death row personally when her and her husband started corresponding with Leroy White, an inmate on death row in Atmore.
White spent 27 years on death row for killing his wife and was executed by lethal injection in 2011. Douglass and her husband visited him for 11 years before he was executed.
"They strapped him down to a table and they put tubes into his veins- tubes that came out of a wall," Douglass said.
Three anonymous people then directed three liquids into White's veins from the other side of the wall, Douglass said.
By the time he was executed, White had made peace with his family as well as his wife's and had multiple affidavits from different sources, including the prosecuting attorney who prosecuted him in the first place, to request he not be executed Douglass said.
"It's a knee-jerk reaction because it sounds fair," Douglass said. "A life for a life sounds right."
Douglass said she sees the system as "capricious," and fears that it does not represent the defendants well, saying that there is no public defender system for those convicted.
Clay Crenshaw, assistant attorney general, chief of the Capital Litigation Division and Auburn alumnus of '85, said that while he feels the system for defendants can be strenuous, he does not feel they are misrepresented.
Crenshaw said the process consists of three stages, involving 10 courts. In the case of trial and direct appeal, the defendant is appointed a lawyer Crenshaw said.
While the defendant may not be appointed a lawyer when the case goes back into circuit court, the defendants are often represented by out-of-state law firms or other organizations who have many resources Crenshaw said.
He also feels that because the defendant does go through so many parts of the judicial process, errors should be spotted.
"You have all of these levels of review, so certainly if somebody is truly innocent or there's something invalid about their conviction, they should be able to prove it with all of these levels of review," Crenshaw said.
Another unique thing about Alabama's capital punishment policy concerns its judges, something he feels is appropriate.
"Alabama is one of three states that allows for the judge to be the sentence. The jury renders a verdict on either death, or life without parole and the judge, in certain circumstances can override that verdict," Crenshaw said.
"Judges sentence in every other kind of criminal case so why should it be different in a capital case?" Crenshaw said.
Crenshaw said he feels capital punishment is appropriate in certain circumstances.
"When I first came into this position, I was ambivalent really about the death penalty, it was, 'OK it's there', but once you see these cases and some of the horrible acts that these folks do, it kind of makes you a believer," Crenshaw said.
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