87% of individuals on Death Row in Alabama were sentenced by a non-unanimous jury verdict or judicial override–two practices unique to Alabama alone. Non-Unanimous Jury Sentencing Alabama is the only state in which a non-unanimous jury can sentence someone to death. Nearly 70% of those on Alabama’s death row - 114 out of 166 - would not have been sentenced to death in any other state, all of which require a unanimous vote for death. Many Southern states began to allow non-unanimous jury verdicts after a 1879 Supreme Court decision that held that states could not bar Black people from serving on juries. In 2020, the Supreme Court found that non-unanimous jury verdicts at the state level violated the Sixth Amendment; the requirement for a unanimous jury to convict was found to be implicit within the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. Justice Brett Kavanaugh acknowledged the racist history of non-unanimous jury sentencing and stated, “Why stick by an erroneous precedent that is egregiously wrong as a matter of constitutional law, that allows convictions of some who would not be convicted under the proper constitutional rule, and that tolerates and reinforces a practice that is thoroughly racist in its origins and has continuing racially discriminatory effects?” This 2020 decision did not, however, extend to the sentencing phase of a trial, where a jury decides which punishment to impose after they have found a defendant guilty.  Alabama is the last state to hold onto the outmoded and racist practice of allowing a non-unanimous jury to sentence a person to death. Judicial Override Alabama and Florida are the only states where individuals have been placed on death row by a judge after a jury determined that life without parole was a more appropriate sentence. Both states have abolished the practice of judicial override, but neither applied the change in law retroactively. In Florida, judicial override was abolished in 2016. At that time, no judge had imposed a death sentence since 1999, and only 6 people currently on Florida’s Death Row (less than 2%) were sentenced through judicial override. In 2017, Alabama became the last state to outlaw judicial override. Up until the date of its abolition, many judges throughout Alabama exercised their judicial power to overturn a jury verdict and impose death in capital murder cases. Thirty-one people (nearly 19%) are on death row in Alabama due to judicial override, even though the state has itself admitted the practice was immoral. Senator Dick Drewbacker (R-Montgomery) sponsored the bill to abolish judicial override. Senator Cam Ward (R-Alabaster) stated, “At the end of the day, it is morally wrong for us to allow this to continue in our State. We have a jury system and a jury process for a reason.” The use of judicial override increased significantly in years that judges faced re-election. An EJI report reveals that in 1997, a non-election year in Alabama, only 7% of new death sentences were due to judicial override. On the contrary, in 2008, an election year, the figure rose to 30%. Sources:  Judicial Override:  1. Chip Brownlee, Bill to End Judicial Override in Alabama Clears Senate, ALABAMA POLITICAL REPORTER, February 27, 2017, AT 11:56 AM, https://www.alreporter.com/2017/02/24/bill-end-judicial-override-alabama-clears-senate/ 2. Equal Justice Initiative, “The Death Penalty in Alabama: Judge Override” (2011).  https://eji.org/reports/judge-override/#:~:text=Nearly%2020%25%20of%20the%20people,override%20on%20April%2011%2C%202017.  3. Michael Radelet and G. Ben Cohen, The Decline of the Judicial Override, ANNUAL REVIEW OF LAW AND SOCIAL SCIENCE, October 2019, https://files.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/The-Decline-of-the-Judicial-Override.pdf  4. AL SB16 2017 https://legiscan.com/AL/bill/SB16/2017