Alabama’s death row holds 161 people as of April 2025, housed at Holman Correctional Facility for men and Julia Tutwiler Prison for women, and Alabama sentences more people to death per capita than any other state in the country.1Death Penalty Information Center. Racial Demographics The system has features found nowhere else: a jury can recommend death without being unanimous, judges could override life recommendations until 2017, and in January 2024 Alabama became the first government anywhere to execute someone using nitrogen gas.
Who Is on Alabama’s Death Row
Of the 161 people under a sentence of death in April 2025, 81 were Black, 75 were White, and 3 were Latino.1Death Penalty Information Center. Racial Demographics Black residents make up roughly 27% of Alabama’s population but about half of its death row. The population is overwhelmingly male, with a small number of women held separately at Tutwiler.
Time on death row is long. Nationally, more than half of death-sentenced prisoners have been there over 18 years, and the average gap between sentencing and execution is about 19 years.2Bureau of Justice Statistics. Capital Punishment – Statistical Tables Alabama’s cases track that pattern, driven largely by the appeals process.
What Crimes Can Bring a Death Sentence
A death sentence requires an intentional murder committed under one of roughly 18 aggravating circumstances defined in state law. The most commonly charged include killing during a kidnapping, robbery, rape, sodomy, burglary, sexual abuse, or arson. Killing an on-duty law enforcement officer or prison guard qualifies whether or not the defendant knew the victim’s occupation.
Other qualifying situations include murder for hire, killing two or more people in a single act or course of conduct, killing a witness or public official, killing while serving a life sentence, and killing by someone with a prior murder conviction within the past 20 years. Prosecutors must prove both the intentional killing and at least one qualifying circumstance.
How a Death Sentence Is Imposed
An Alabama capital trial runs in two phases. First the jury decides guilt, which requires a unanimous vote to convict. If the defendant is convicted, the case moves to a penalty phase where both sides present aggravating factors (reasons for death) and mitigating factors (reasons for life). The jury then recommends life without parole or death.
The 10-2 Rule
Alabama is the only death-penalty state that allows a jury to recommend death without being unanimous. A 10-2 or 11-1 vote is enough. Bills to require unanimity have repeatedly died in the legislature, most recently in 2023 without reaching a floor vote.
The End of Judicial Override
For decades, Alabama judges could override a jury’s life recommendation and impose death instead, and Alabama was the last state to allow the practice. Governor Kay Ivey signed legislation ending judicial override in 2017.3Supreme Court of the United States. Application for a Stay of Execution – Vernon Madison v. State of Alabama A judge must now follow the jury’s sentencing verdict.
The 2017 change is not retroactive. As of 2024, about 33 people remained on death row because a judge overrode their jury’s life recommendation, a punishment that could not be imposed under today’s law. Bills to apply the reform retroactively have stalled.
Appeals After a Death Sentence
Every death sentence triggers an automatic appeal to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, which reviews the record for legal errors, checks the aggravating and mitigating findings, and assesses whether the sentence is proportionate to similar cases.4Justia. Alabama Code 13A-5-53 – Appellate Review of Death Sentence The Alabama Supreme Court can then review that decision, and defendants can seek U.S. Supreme Court review or federal habeas corpus relief.5Alabama Attorney General. Alabama Death Penalty Appeals Process
In January 2023, the Alabama Supreme Court changed how appellate courts handle errors that trial counsel failed to raise. Previously, the Court of Criminal Appeals had to search the record for “plain error” in every death case. The amended rule makes that review discretionary rather than mandatory.6Alabama Judicial System. Rule 45A, Alabama Rules of Appellate Procedure – Order The practical consequence: if a defense attorney fails to object at trial, the issue may never be reviewed on appeal.
Protections That Can Stop an Execution
Two categories of people cannot be executed even after all appeals are exhausted. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that executing a person with an intellectual disability violates the Eighth Amendment. Alabama uses an IQ threshold of 70 or below as its primary screening tool and has placed heavy weight on IQ scores, arguing that non-IQ evidence such as daily living skills has never overridden test results in its cases. Defense attorneys argue a proper assessment must consider all evidence of intellectual functioning. The issue remains actively litigated, with cases reaching the U.S. Supreme Court as recently as late 2025.
A separate protection bars executing anyone who lacks a rational understanding of why they are being punished. Under Ford v. Wainwright and Madison v. Alabama, the focus is the person’s current mental state, not any specific diagnosis. Dementia, severe mental illness, or another condition that destroys comprehension of the punishment can support a finding of incompetency. Simply not remembering the crime is not enough on its own; courts look at whether the person understands the link between their actions and the sentence.
Clemency
The governor of Alabama holds the sole power to commute a death sentence or grant a reprieve. The Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles, which handles clemency in nearly every other type of case, has no authority over death sentences.7Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 15-22-36 – Authority to Grant Pardons and Paroles A prisoner generally must have completed the initial round of court appeals to be eligible.
Clemency in capital cases is extraordinarily rare. Fewer than 1% of death-sentenced prisoners nationally have their sentences commuted. In Alabama’s entire history, three known instances have occurred: former Governor Fob James commuted Judith Ann Neely’s sentence in 1999, and Governor Kay Ivey commuted the sentences of Robin “Rocky” Myers in 2025 and Charles Lee “Sonny” Burton in 2026. For most people on death row, the courts are the only realistic route to relief.
Where Death Row Inmates Are Held
Men under a death sentence are held at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, which also houses the execution chamber.8Alabama Department of Corrections. Execution Set for Alabama Death Row Inmate Derrick Dearman Women are held at Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in a dedicated female death row unit.9Alabama Department of Corrections. Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women Both are maximum-security settings, and inmates are typically confined to individual cells for most of each day.
Visits are usually non-contact and limited to approved family and friends. Attorneys get confidential visits with no barrier. In the period just before a scheduled execution, the warden can allow a full-contact family visit at their discretion.
Execution Methods
Alabama authorizes three methods: lethal injection, electrocution, and nitrogen hypoxia. Lethal injection is the default unless the condemned person affirmatively elects an alternative.10Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 15-18-82.1 – Methods of Execution; Election of Method; Constitutionality The lethal injection protocol uses midazolam (a sedative), rocuronium bromide (a paralytic), and potassium chloride (which stops the heart).11Death Penalty Information Center. State-by-State Execution Protocols
A condemned person gets one chance to choose an alternative, and the election must be in writing to the prison warden within 30 days after the Alabama Supreme Court affirms the death sentence.10Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 15-18-82.1 – Methods of Execution; Election of Method; Constitutionality Miss that window and the right to choose is waived. Nitrogen hypoxia became available on June 1, 2018, and Alabama used it for the first time anywhere in the world when it executed Kenneth Smith on January 25, 2024.
Scheduling an Execution and the Death Watch
Alabama law says an execution date should fall no fewer than 30 and no more than 100 days from sentencing.12Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 15-18-82 – When, Where, and by Whom Executions Conducted Appeals push the actual date years or decades out, with the Alabama Supreme Court issuing a new warrant when the time comes. In 2023, the court amended its rules to let the governor set a broader time window for carrying out the execution instead of confining it to a single calendar day, a change that followed several instances where the midnight deadline expired before the execution could be completed.
All executions happen at Holman. In the days before an execution, the condemned person moves to a holding cell near the chamber and is placed on what the Alabama Department of Corrections calls “Death Watch.” Officers observe the inmate around the clock. The inmate has access to a television outside the cell, officer-facilitated phone calls, mail, a Bible or equivalent religious text, and any reading material the warden approves. Personal belongings stay outside the cell, and hygiene items are passed in and taken back after use.13Alabama Department of Corrections. Execution Procedures, March 2021
Reversals and Exonerations
At least 170 Alabama death sentences have been reversed by state or federal courts, producing exonerations, lesser convictions, or reduced sentences. Since 1976, nine people have been fully exonerated from Alabama’s death row after evidence emerged that they were wrongly convicted.14Death Penalty Information Center. Innocence Database Over the same period, Alabama carried out 83 executions. That works out to roughly one exoneration for every eight executions.
The best-known case is Anthony Ray Hinton, who spent 30 years on Alabama’s death row before his 2015 release after the forensic evidence used at his trial was discredited. His case became a widely cited example of how inadequate defense representation and unreliable expert testimony can produce a wrongful capital conviction, and of why the long appeals timeline is often the only thing that catches the mistake.