ATMORE, Ala. — Alabama is set to execute an inmate Thursday night for the murders of three police officers who were shot by another man in a hail of gunfire at a suspected crack house in 2004.
Nathaniel Woods, 43, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection at the state prison in Atmore, Alabama, unless the governor or courts intervene.
Woods and Kerry Spencer were convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in the slayings of the three Birmingham officers that rocked Alabama’s largest city that year. Carlos Owen, Harley A. Chisolm III and Charles R. Bennett died in the gunfire while trying to serve a misdemeanor domestic assault warrant on Woods at a suspected drug house.
Prosecutors argued Woods helped set an ambush and should die for the killings even though he did not pull the trigger on the high-powered rifle that killed the men. Such convictions are allowed under state law, and other people have been executed for “non-triggerman” slayings. A jury recmmended Woods receive the death penalty by a 10-2 vote.
But supporters including the son of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Woods’ family appealed for mercy, arguing that Spencer said he was the sole person responsible for the shootings and that Woods received an unfair trial.
“Killing this African American man, whose case appears to have been strongly mishandled by the courts, could produce an irreversible injustice. Are you willing to allow a potentially innocent man to be executed?” Martin Luther King III wrote to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey.
The U.S. Supreme Court turned down Woods’ appeal and the state set an execution date earlier this year. No execution date has been set for Spencer, who was convicted before Woods and is on death row at Holman prison.
Testimony showed the officers approached a small house where Woods and Spencer were believed to deal drugs; at least two other people were also inside. After talking to Woods through a back door, Owen and Chisholm entered. State lawyers wrote in court filings that Woods said he was surrendering to officers and soon after Spencer opened fire with a high-powered rife.
Owen, 58, and Chisholm, 40, were found dead in the kitchen just inside a rear door, and Bennett, 33, was fatally shot near the front door. A fourth officer was wounded but survived.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall asked Ivey to let the execution proceed. “Although Woods was not the shooter, he was hardly an innocent bystander,” Marshall wrote in a letter to Ivey.
Woods’ lawyers unsuccessfully appealed his conviction, arguing he had ineffective counsel and that the trial had multiple errors, including the admission of song lyrics and drawings taken from his cell while he was awaiting trial. State attorneys said that while Woods was awaiting trial, deputies found a drawing of a bullet-riddled police car in his jail cell and song lyrics about killing such as, “Haven’t you ever heard of a killa I drop pigs like Kerry Spencer.”
Woods’ attorneys on Thursday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the execution over what they said was a lack of information given to inmates when they had to decide whether nitrogen hypoxia — an execution method authorized but not yet implemented by the state — would be their preferred execution method. Woods didn’t pick a method. Attorneys said inmates did not know that would affect the timing of their execution.
