Disassembly of the Rocky Meyers: Kay Ivey looks at a man who could be innocent, leaving Steve Marshall ‘sad’

This is an opinion column.

Governor Kay Ivey left Alabama Attorney Steve Marshall sad.

Not only a bit sad but “deeply sad ” Or that’s Marshall he wrote in a letter to the governor after her Switching the death sentence of Robin “Rocky” Myers To life in prison.

“I am surprised by Governor Ivey’s decision to commute Rocky Myers’ death sentence and I am bewildered that she chose not to directly communicate with me about this case or her decision,” said Marshall.

Amazed?

Embarrassed?

Someone gets that man some salts with odors before fainting.

He should not be amazed or disconcerting Marshall that Ivey didn’t want to kill Myers. The jury that condemned Myers in 1993 didn’t want to kill him either.

According to one of those jury members, the jury had divided into Myers’ fault, with three holdouts by pressing the death penalty. His verdict, guilty with a life imprisonment recommendation, had been a commitment verdict.

However, the judge in the case annulled the jury’s recommendation and gave him the death penalty, anyway, a practice since prohibited by the Alabama Legislature.

Judicial cancellation aside, The case against Myers was a careless disasterplagued with witnesses who changed their stories before and after the trial.

Myers scored between 64 and 71 in the IQ tests as a child and before the murder. The victim, who was alert when the police found her and who knew Myers, a neighbor, did not identify him as the murderer before he died, not a second victim who survived the attack that night.

And there is no physical evidence that links Myers with crime.

A palm footprint taken from the scene and the fingerprints raised from a stolen video recorder from the victim’s house also do not coincide with Myers.

Later, two witnesses said Myers had changed the video recorder stolen by Crack, although those witnesses also identified others before and after.

Another witness of The Crackhouse said the police launched a case of car theft against him in exchange for his testimony that involved Myers. Now he says he lied, and the police left the car that stole next to a road.

All this is to say that there are many reasons to doubt Myers’ fault, enough to convince Ivey that the State should not kill him, although not enough to release him.

Because one of his lawyers lost a deadline for crucial appeals in 2003, Myers has little legal appeal and will probably still die in prison, but not at a time designated this spring.

That’s something, I guess.

I have been very critical of how Ivey has neglected and ignored the even clearer cases of unfair conviction in Alabama’s death corridor, and I will not let it eliminate the hook for that. Ivey made the correct call in the case of Myers, but there is still a job to do.

Toforrest Johnson is still there.

The prosecutors were so insecure of Johnson’s case that at the same time they accused another man of the same murder, although only one of them could have done so. It turns out that both men had multiple Alibi witnesses who placed them in the city at the time of murder, and even the prosecutor who brought the case now says that Johnson deserves at least another judgment.

Christopher Barbour is still there too.

His defense lawyers fought to prove the DNA collected in the scene of a 1992 violation and murder. Not only that DNA No It implies Barur, but coincided with a neighbor – A neighbor now in prison for later killing someone else.

In all three cases, Alabama’s Attorney General’s office has fought to walk these men in the Alabama Execution Chamber despite not only a reasonable doubt of their guilt but convincing evidence of their innocence.

In the case of Barbour, the Alabama Attorney General’s Office fought against the evidence of that DNA until a court ruled against him in 2023, more than 30 years after the murder.

And despite that evidence that points to another person, state prosecutors still insist on Barbour did it and should die.

“It is disconcerting that in this case, the State minimizes the importance of the new DNA evidence when the State is based on similar DNA to ensure clear condemnations and cases of cold,” the United States District Judge, Emily Marks, who is reviewing the case, wrote last year.

Not only disconcerting.

It is disconcerting.

And absolutely alongside Steve Marshall.

Marshall would prefer to cover up a broken system than to fix it. You prefer to kill innocent people than to explain how they put themselves in the death corridor first, so we need a governor who does it for him.

That is the surprising here, not the governor who exercises his duty under the law, but a general prosecutor who prefers to kill a prisoner to question his guilt.

And that is much worse than sad.

Kyle Whitmire is the Washington Watchdog columnist for Al.com and winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. You can follow it Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook, unknown , Rags and Bluesky.