In 1991, six men walked into an auto parts store in Talladega, Alabama, to rob it. One of the men, Charles “Sonny” Burton, walked out of the store before another, Derrick DeBruce, shot and killed Doug Battle, a customer.
In exchange for their testimony and plea deals, four of the men received reduced sentences. DeBruce, the only defendant held responsible for Battle’s death, initially was given a death sentence before being resentenced in 2015 to life without parole. Burton, now a 75-year-old wheelchair-bound grandfather, whom the State of Alabama has acknowledged did not kill Battle, was given the death penalty and is scheduled to be executed on March 12, 2026.
A broad coalition of individuals, however, is calling on Gov. Kay Ivey to grant clemency to Burton. They include anti-death penalty advocates, spiritual advisers, members of the jury that sentenced Burton, and even the victim’s daughter.
The Rev. Jeff Hood, an activist who has ministered to numerous Alabama death row inmates, said, “It’s crazy to think that the State of Alabama thinks it’s OK to kill somebody who hasn’t killed anybody.”
One of the jurors who sentenced Burton, Priscilla Townsend, has sent a letter to Ivey requesting clemency. She wrote, “If I had known at the time of the trial that the man who pulled the trigger would not be facing a death sentence, I would not have thought it was fair to give Mr. Burton, who was not even in the building when Mr. Battle was shot, a harsher sentence.”
Burton’s spiritual adviser, Imam Abdul-Addarr of Masjid Baitul Haqq in Mobile, appealed to the virtue of mercy in a statement. “When irreversible harm is at stake, mercy is not weakness; it is moral strength,” he stated. “Across our faith traditions, justice divorced from mercy ceases to be justice at all.”
Abdul-Addarr is not opposed to the death penalty but believes it should not apply in this case. One of his reasons is that the victim’s daughter has forgiven Burton.
In a December 2025 op-ed, Tori Battle wrote about her father’s death and stated, “There is no evidence that Mr. Burton knew, or had any intent, that a shooting would occur.” She added that if the death penalty for Burton “is allowed to stand, this would represent a fundamental flaw in how capital punishment is applied in America.”
Earlier in 2025, Battle was contacted by the Alabama attorney general’s Victims’ Assistance Office to inform her that the state planned to proceed with the execution. She expressed her opposition, at which point she was told it did not matter. “As the victim’s child,” she stated, “I was not consulted about mercy, only logistics.”
“I lost my father to violence,” Battle wrote. “Another death will not bring him back. It will only deepen my trauma and the moral cost we all share.”
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Senior Editor at Good Faith Media.