By:Ralph Chapoco-January 15, 20267:01 am Article courtesy of Death penalty in Alabama would expand under House committee-approved bills | Alabama Reflector
Rep. Matt Simpson, R-Daphne, stands on the floor of the Alabama House of Representatives on Feb. 8, 2024 in Montgomery, Alabama. The House Judiciary Committee passed two bills sponsored by Simpson to expand the circumstances that prosecutors may seek the death penalty. (Anna Barrett/Alabama Reflector)
An Alabama House committee Wednesday approved two bills that would expand the list of criminal offenses eligible for the death penalty.
The House Judiciary Committee approved HB 41 and HB 20, both sponsored by Rep. Matt Simpson, R-Daphne. HB 41 would make it it a capital offense to rape, sodomize or sexually torture a child younger than 12 years old. HB 20 would make it a capital offense to murder someone while also creating “a great risk of death to multiple persons.”
“Some people need to die,” Simpson, a former child victims prosecutor in Baldwin County, told the committee on Wednesday. “That is exactly the point. This is the worst of the worst offenses. These people are taking advantage of children who cannot defend themselves. These are the absolute victims of society.”
The legislation, if passed, would join laws passed by other conservative states seeking to challenge a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared the death penalty unconstitutional for all offenses except murder.
The bill retains much of the language that is already in statute but adds the three different offenses to what is essentially a growing list of aggravating circumstances that make someone eligible to be put to death.
Alabama law currently identifies 21 aggravating factors that allow prosecutors to charge a person with capital punishment and, by extension, allow a defendant to be put to death. Among them is murdering a first responder while the person is on duty, murdering someone with a deadly weapon while in a vehicle, or murdering someone in the presence of a child who is younger than 14 years old “if the victim was the parent or legal guardian of the child.” But murder is the only offense subject to the death penalty.
Simpson filed a nearly identical bill that was approved by the House Judiciary Committee early in the 2025 session but did not pass the Legislature.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 struck down a Louisiana law allowing the death penalty for child rape in a case known as Kennedy v. Louisiana. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy cited concerns that imposing the death penalty would discourage child abuse reporting and put victims’ lives in danger. He also noted a victim in the capital child abuse case had to repeatedly describe her trauma to investigators and prosecutors.
“During formative years of her adolescence, made all the more daunting for having to come to terms with the brutality of her experience, (the victim) was required to discuss the case at length with law enforcement personnel,” Kennedy wrote.
Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, cited those concerns in committee on Wednesday.
“In pursuit of the death penalty in that particular situation, you would not only require the person to be courageous enough, and the family to be courageous enough, to come forward, and say, ‘We want this person prosecuted,’ but the victim and the victim’s family would also have to participate in the decision to ultimately kill that person too,” England said. “The victim, in that situation, would be less likely to come forward knowing that prosecuting that person means that coach, pastor, aunt, uncle, mom, dad, whoever, would not only be prosecuted, but they would also be put to death.”
He was also concerned that the law could provide leverage to perpetrators when dealing with the victim.
“Imagine you being an abuser, and the law hands you the ultimate tool to abuse a victim by not only saying, ‘You will destroy our family if you turn me in, but you will also kill me too,’” England said.
Other people that advocate on behalf of children have concerns with the bill.
“In general, we want to ensure that the population that the bill is intended to protect and to bring justice for really are the children,” said Apreill Hartsfield, director of policy, advocacy and research for VOICES for Alabama’s Children.
Florida in 2023 and Tennessee in 2024 enacted similar laws in the hopes of challenging the previous precedent in the U.S. Supreme Court.
“What they are doing is showing that it is not unusual, and this is a nationwide push to show that this is not an unusual punishment, and therefore the rationale in Kennedy is no longer valid,” Simpson said.
HB 20 adds murdering someone while risking the lives of others as another aggravating circumstance to the list of offenses that make someone eligible for capital punishment.
Simpson is introducing his bills to expand capital punishment as public support for the death patently continues to wane. About 52% currently support the death penalty, lower than the 80% who said they approve of it in 1994. The number of people who oppose the death penalty has increased, from 16% in the 1990s to about 40% in recent years.
The bills go to the full House of Representatives.
