The state of Alabama is scheduled to execute Sonny Burton on March 12, 2026. An execution in Alabama is not unusual. Since 2016, the state has executed 73 people. Governor Kay Ivey has granted clemency one time in almost ten years in office.
Even the fiercest supporters of capital punishment would seem to take offense at the execution of Sonny Burton. Mr. Burton didn’t kill anyone. Is the state of Alabama that bloodthirsty? After the bombing of churches, lynching of African Americans and the murder of an Episcopal seminary student in 1965, one would hope Alabama would want to steer a more merciful path.
Consider the facts of his case. In 1991, Burton accompanied Derrick DeBruce and four other men to an AutoZone store in Talladega. He carried a gun. He was guilty of armed robbery. Then, Mr. Burton left the store. Mr. DeBruce stayed behind and killed a man.
Mr. DeBruce was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Mr. Burton was also convicted of murder and was sentenced under a state law that permits accomplices to receive the death penalty if a murder happens during the course of another felony, like a robbery.
In the legal machinations of Alabama, Mr. DeBruce appealed and received a life sentence without parole. Mr. Burton is now facing death while the murderer has received a lesser sentence.
On what planet can this be seen as justice? Is the law of Alabama more sacred than the rights of Mr. Burton? Even the conditional vengeance of “an eye for an eye” from ancient Hebrew culture would exonerate Burton from death.
Attempting to understand requires an understanding of the South. The southern states execute the most people.
The Top Ten State Executions
State Number of Executions since 1976
Texas 586
Oklahoma 123
Florida 105
Virginiai 115
Missouri 197
Georgia 76
Alabama 73
Ohio 56
North Carolina 43
Arizona 40
Arkansas 31
Eight of the top ten states for executions are Southern states. Does the South have a deep attraction to capital punishment?
“Violence appears intrinsic to the Southern soul,” argues historian Thomas L. Connelly Images of violence crowd the southern picture album. Andrew Jackson destroying the Creek Indian nation at Horseshoe Bend, the dueling code in antebellum Louisiana, General Nathan Bedford Forest leading white-robed comrades of the KKK, Appalachian Mountain feuds; the Harlan Kentucky labor wars, the Scotsboro boys and the murders in Hayneville, Alabama and Neshoba County Mississippi.
Perhaps our deepest connection to violence remains the quasi-legal executions of the Lynching Era. James H. Cone, in The Cross and the Lynching Tree says, “Lynching was an extralegal punishment sanctioned by the community.”
Nearly 5,000 people were lynched during the lynching era of America (1880 – 1940). The prevailing public attitude about lynching allowed Theodore Bilbo to campaign for the Senate in the 1930s as someone who would endorse lynching black people to keep them from voting.
Daily newspapers publicized hangings and lynchings. Preachers, church choirs, good Christians and the curious gathered to witness a lynching against the backdrop of “Shall We Gather at the River?”
Southerners are predisposed to the violence of capital punishment. But they didn’t learn the ideology from Jesus. The lynching tree has a contrapuntal – the cross of Jesus. Visions of black bodies dangling from the trees can’t escape the scene of Jesus hanging from the cross. Acts 10:39 remains as testimony: “They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.”
In “Christ Recrucified,” Countee Cullen lamented, “The South is Crucifying Christ again” as he gazed at another lynching (1922).
Cone saw clearly the connection between the cross and the lynching tree. He wrote, “Until we can see the cross and the lynching tree together, until we can identify Christ with a ‘recrucified’ black body hanging from a lynching tree, there can be no genuine understanding of Christian identity in America, and no deliverance from the brutal legacy of slavery and white supremacy.”
Southern notions of law and order, justice and God’s vengeance still color attitudes toward capital punishment. The treating of Romans 13:4 as if it were the Eleventh Commandment, literally applied, seems to demand capital punishment. “If you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority[a] does not bear the sword in vain! It is the agent of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer.” Coupled with Romans 13:4 is a long standing agreement with “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” These Scripture verses still breathe life into support of capital punishment.
Rev. Robert Jeffress calls it “the godly principle.” He argues, “God gives government the power of the sword, of capital punishment, of executing wrong doers.” It’s as if “You shall not kill” has been abrogated by a bad reading of Romans 13:4 and a clinging to a literal reading of Exodus 21:23 – 25 (also Leviticus 24:20 and Deuteronomy 19:21).
The combination of Southern propensity for violence and vengeance coupled with strident interpretations of Scripture mandating “no mercy” is on full display in Mr. Burton’s Case. Everyone agrees: Burton did not kill anyone.
Several jurors from Mr. Burton’s trial have said that they do not want him to be killed. Tori Battle, the daughter of Doug Battle — the man who was killed at the AutoZone — also doesn’t want the state to execute him.
Most importantly, there is a Christian argument for mercy. Stanley Hauerwas argues, “The Christian objection to capital punishment is not that it is cruel and inhumane, but because all human sacrifice has been ended through Christ’s cross.”
The Church has a stake in limiting the state’s power to punish. When we lift up the bread and say, “This is my body,” and the cup with, “This is my blood,” we remind the world that the Eucharist is a politics not of this world.
Justice should be tempered with mercy. Governor Ivey can cast one vote for mercy in a region tool long known for inhumanity to humankind. She has the power to offer mercy.
God has mercy. May Governor Ivey follow God’s example.
