Tonight in Your Rights: Mercy for Sonny Burton
Alabama Gov. Ivey takes Sonny Burton off death row. Also: Trump DOJ's "Stop the Steal" lawyer Ed Martin faces disciplinary proceedings
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Charles “Sonny” Burton received a commutation from Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) on Thursday, two days shy of his scheduled execution by nitrogen gas for a murder in which everyone agrees he had no direct involvement.
Burton took part in a 1991 armed robbery of an AutoZone store in Talladega, Ala., but he wasn’t present when co-conspirator Derrick DeBruce shot and killed a man named Doug Battle. Two of the six men involved in the crime — DeBruce and Burton — were charged and convicted of capital crimes.
Action Item:
Civic engagement helped lead to this outcome for Sonny Burton: On Monday, his attorneys, relatives and supporters delivered a 60,000-signature petition seeking his clemency.
DeBruce was the triggerman, and Burton was charged with felony murder, a controversial statute found in 48 U.S. states letting prosecutors treat lesser felonies as first-degree murder if death results from a broader conspiracy. Criminal justice reform advocates frequently criticize the statute for leading to disproportionate and lopsided outcomes.
For those advocates, the Burton case provided a case in point: DeBruce, the actual killer, prevailed on appeal and spent the rest of his life in prison, eventually dying of natural causes.
Burton spent roughly three decades on death row — until Gov. Ivey commuted his sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole on Tuesday.
U.S. Campaign to End the Death Penalty’s executive director Laura Porter expressed her gratitude to Ivey.
“The death penalty process is deeply flawed when someone who was not present for the killing faces execution, while the person who committed the murder does not,” Porter wrote in a statement. “It is uplifting to see that more and more governors across the ideological spectrum are recognizing problems with death penalty cases.”
Burton’s legal team expressed a similar sentiment.
“This decision ensures that the ultimate and irreversible punishment will not be carried out,” they wrote in a statement. “The Governor’s action reflects careful consideration and affirms the principle that justice must always leave room for caution, humanity, and mercy.”
All Rise News highlighted Burton’s case in a recent video interview with his longtime attorney Matt Schulz and the column “Rising This Week.”
Ed Martin faces disciplinary proceedings
The D.C. Bar has opened disciplinary proceedings against “Stop the Steal” election denier turned Trump Justice Department attack dog Ed Martin.
One of the faces of Trump’s legal effort to subvert the 2020 election, Martin was rewarded with a top prosecutor post in the District of D.C., where the Jan. 6 rioters for whom he advocated were tried and convicted. Martin’s extreme partisanship doomed his tenure, and he was replaced by Jeanine Pirro, who was able to pass Senate confirmation.
During his brief stint as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Martin wrote a threatening letter to Georgetown University Law Center Dean William Treanor, laying out plans to punish the University for allegedly teaching and promoting “DEI,” an acronym for “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.”
“Mr. Martin did not define ‘DEI’ or specify what ideas Georgetown Law was teaching or promoting that the government deemed unacceptable,” the charging document notes.
On Feb. 17, Martin announced that nobody affiliated with the university would work inside the Justice Department. He threatened a month later to revoke the university’s not-for-profit status and end its receipt of $1 billion in tax dollars.
Disciplinary counsel Hamilton P. Fox III wrote that Martin “knew or should have known that, as a government official, his conduct violated the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States,” by interfering with the university’s rights to free expression and denying due process.
Martin “violated his oath of office” to support the Constitution of the United States, Fox added.
In a separate count, Martin is accused of improperly seeking ex parte meetings — without D.C. Bar disciplinary representatives present — with the chief judge and senior judges of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in an effort to dismiss the complaint against him. Both times, the chief judge responded that Martin should follow the regular procedures, according to his charges.
Ex-U.S. Attorney Harry Litman and I discussed the significance of this action today on Substack Live. Watch the video of the conversation here, and click here to read the charging document against Martin.
Anthropic’s case against Hegseth put on fast track
Last night’s newsletter highlighted the artificial intelligence giant Anthropic’s new lawsuit against the Department of Defense, Secretary Pete Hegseth, and dozens of other U.S. government agencies and officials.
At a status conference on Tuesday afternoon, a federal judge put that case on a fast-track.
“There really are irreparable injuries that are concrete and are mounting every day,” WilmerHale partner Michael Mongan said at the hearing, adding that the government has been “affirmatively reaching out to [Anthropic’s] customers” to discourage them from working with the company.
Hegseth has been trying to punish Anthropic because the company insisted on two safety measures for the military’s use of its code: Human beings must select targets and weapons when it comes to war-fighting, and the AI cannot be used for mass surveillance.
In response, Hegseth designated Anthropic a “supply-chain risk,” a label that Mongan said immediately scared off customers and could cost the company billions of dollars. Justice Department attorney James Harlow refused to say whether Trump’s government would try to hit Anthropic with other punishments while the case was being litigated.
Citing that uncertainty, U.S. District Judge Rita Lim scheduled a hearing for a preliminary injunction for two weeks from today on March 24 at 1:30 p.m. Pacific Time.
“Thousands” of criminal cases in turmoil?
All Rise News reported a federal judge’s warning last night that Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s insistence on installing illegally appointed prosecutors could throw “thousands” of criminal cases into uncertainty in the District of New Jersey alone.
I discussed the consequences of that development with Brian Tyler Cohen in a video that aired today.
Watch it below:
Scheduling note:
A federal judge will hold a hearing on Wednesday morning about the Trump Justice Department’s agreement with Turkey’s state-run Halkbank to end the prosecution of an estimated $20 billion money laundering scheme representing the largest Iran sanctions-busting scheme in U.S. history.
All Rise News will cover the proceedings inside federal court.
I’m sure your excellent coverage of the Sonny Burton case helped in his commutation. Thank you 😊
I am stunned that Gov. Ivey actually did this humanitarian act. But couldn't this have been done much longer ago? Nevertheless, she acted and I commend her for that.