One proposal would allow those sentenced to death before a 2017 law change to be resentenced. The other would put capital punishment to a statewide vote.
By: Ralph Chapoco-December 22, 20257:01 am Article courtesy of: https://alabamareflector.com/
Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, speaks to Rep. Steve Clouse, R-Ozark, on the floor of the Alabama House of Representatives on April 1, 2025 at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama. England has filed two bills for the coming session targeting capital punishment. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)
A state lawmaker has prefiled two bills for the 2026 session of the Alabama Legislature that would reduce the number of people on death row and end the practice altogether in the state.
HB 70, sponsored by Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, allows the resentencing of inmates sentenced to death by a judge over a jury’s recommendation of life without parole. England also introduced HB 76 to amend the Alabama Constitution to ban the use of capital punishment in the state altogether.
“The conversation around the country, in terms of introducing legislation to create more death penalty crimes outside of murder, and discussions the ways that we kill people, instead of moving in that direction, maybe we should figure out if it is something that we still want to do or not,” England said in an interview on Wednesday.
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The bills are unlikely to pass in the Republican-controlled Legislature, where there will be at least two efforts to expand capital punishment in the 2026 session: one to create a capital offense to commit murder while “knowingly creat(ing) a great risk of death to multiple persons;” the other to extend the death penalty to child sexual assault.
Until 2017, Alabama allowed judges to impose the death sentence in capital cases, even if a jury had recommended life in prison. That year, the Alabama Legislature approved a law filed by former Sen. Dick Brewbaker, R-Pike Road, that prohibited the practice, known as judicial override. The bill was not retroactive, and about 30 of the 155 inmates on Alabama’s death row, sentenced before the 2017 law, could be covered by the bill.
The state has executed at least 12 people who were sentenced to death despite a jury’s recommendation of life in prison, according to findings from the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit based in Alabama that focuses on criminal justice reform.
England introduced legislation similar to HB 70 in previous legislative sessions in the quadrennium. In 2024, the House Judiciary Committee rejected HB 27 that would have allowed resentencing for death row inmates sentenced under judicial override.
HB 76 would amend the constitution to prohibit the use of capital punishment.
“No crime shall be punishable by death, and the Legislature, by general law, shall prohibit the death penalty for the commission of any crime,” the proposed amendment in England’s bill states. “Any general law authorizing any individual to be punished by death shall be deemed void.”
England filed HB 76 as the number of people executed in the United States in 2025 reached 48. That number could rise by the end of the year, due to pending executions.
Lawmakers in several states, particularly in the South, have introduced bills that expand the application of the death penalty for crimes other than murder. However, the use of the death penalty is now confined to a handful of conservative states like Alabama. Nationally, public support for capital punishment has declined for over three decades.
“What is interesting is executions are going up but the amount of people getting sentenced to death is going down,” England said. “It appears that across the country there may be a trend developing that the death penalty is not as acceptable as it once was.”
The Alabama Legislature will begin the 2026 regular session on Jan. 13.
