Please excuse my rambling post, but I am horrified and saddened by this. This story is horrific and heartbreaking. Nate Woods was convicted of killing three cops. Only he was not the shooter, and the prosecution never argued that he was.
According to news articles, four cops set out to execute an arrest warrant for Woods, for a misdemeanor offense. They found him at a drug house. When they came to execute the warrant, one of Woods friends shot and killed three cops. The friend admitted to the shooting and is on death row. One surviving officer said that Woods surrendered before the shooting started. Yet the prosecution argued that Woods set up a trap for the cops and was still responsible for their deaths, because there was evidence that he hated cops. I haven’t read the court documents. But this is an absurd argument by the prosecution because how is a person to know ahead of time when the cops are going to execute a warrant, let along set a trap? When is someone supposed to know the cops are coming with enough time to entrap four officers? The AG is Alabama is saying that Woods was the bait and the shooter the hook. This is laughable because again — how is someone bait when being arrested? It’s not like police advertise when they execute a warrant.
It gets worse. The court excluded evidence that the shooter may have been acting in self defense, or at least in Woods defense. And some court documents surfaced that two of the cops were known to be corrupt — requiring payment from local drug dealers for protection.
And still it gets worse. The jury did not unanimously vote for the death penalty. Two did not want him to die.
On appeal — his conviction and sentence were upheld because there were no legal errors in his trial, which may have been true. The Supreme Court of the US likely rejected his case. But there is a huge problem with executing a man based on this set of facts. It is unethical and immoral.
This is not just the racist execution by the state of Alabama (it is). It’s not just a modern day lynching (it is). It is a complete failure of the federal court system, along with the criminal “justice” system of the state of Alabama.
We know, or at least those of us in the criminal defense world know, that juries get stuff wrong all the time, often for racist reasons. Or because the prosecution hid information. Or because the cops did. But we have almost no way to overturn an unjust jury verdict, which is a failing of our federal court system. Because if we know that some state court systems are systematically racist and unjust, that is when the federal system is support to step in. It doesn’t — and instead an unjust result is rarely overturned so long as the normal niceties are followed. And that is what happened here — no one should be executed on the facts of this case. Yet it happened and was perfectly legal, and we all know this would not have happened if a white man in the South (or anywhere else) has shot and killed three black officers.
The federal criminal justice system needs to change. They need to be able to review state convictions in a meaningful
way, including reviewing the facts underlying a conviction. This does not happen now, at least not with any regularity. The federal courts (and state appellate courts) need to actually examine the facts of a case (which appellate courts do not do), particularly in jurisdictions that we know are overtly racist (which is all of them).
I know this isn’t very coherent or more than some upset rambling. But I’m a criminal defense attorney, primarily in juvenile defense. I am so sick of this shit. If we were truly a just nation, we would have abandoned the death penalty long ago, like Europe has done. Instead, we stand with Iran, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea - the other paragons of liberty and justice that also execute its citizens.
This practice is barbaric and needs to stop. We can’t make the death penalty just or fair. We can’t make it unbiased, neutral, and not racist. It has to end.
RIP Mr Woods, and deepest sympathy to his family.