Latest / THE DAILY BRIEF / Sonny Burton didnt kill anybody, but Alabama is set to execute him

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Sonny Burton didnt kill anybody, but Alabama is set to execute him · THE DAILY BRIEF

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: In less than a week. The state of Alabama plans
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: to execute a seventy five year old man for a
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: killing they know he did not commit.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: I shouldn't die for something that I have him downe.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: His name is Charles Sunny Burton. Days ago he called
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: me from death row.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Hey, I've been here a long time.
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  Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety one, Sonny and five other men committed
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: an armed robbery at an AutoZone. He grabbed cash, then
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: ran outside and waited at the car inside and accomplished
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: shot and killed a customer named Doug Battle. Did you
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: know a murder was about to happen?
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: No, I would have stopped that. I would have stopped that.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: The man who pulled the trigger was sentenced to death.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Years later, a circuit court reduced that sentence to life
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: in prison, finding his lawyer rendered ineffective assistance during the
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: penalty phase. That gunman died behind bars in twenty twenty,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: But Sonny Burton, the man who had been outside at
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: the car, is scheduled to be killed on March twelfth,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: even though he never killed.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Anyone they participate in account of a way.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Sonny has been fighting his death sentence for three decades.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: He's lost all of his appeals. Prosecutors argue he was
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: the ringleader of the group, acclaimed Sonny denies.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: I didn't pay no bad I did kailled nobody to
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  Speaker 2: shoot no battery.
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  Speaker 1: Now he has an unlikely ally, the victim's daughter, Tory Battle.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: She recently published an op ed urging Alabama Governor k
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Ivy to spare Sonny Burton's life. She wrote, as I've
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: grown older, I've come to understand that justice is not
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: about vengeance. It's about truth, proportionality, and fairness, adding, no
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: one from the state has ever sat with me to
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: explain why Alabama believes it must execute a man who
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: did not kill me my father. The explanation is called
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: the felony murder rule.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: People who are convicted and serving sentences for felony murder
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  Speaker 3: did not commit an intentional killing.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Doctor nasgol Gandnusch is the director of research at The
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Sentencing Project, a nonprofit that advocates for effective crime policies.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: She says felony murder is a distinctly American legal doctrine
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  Speaker 1: that can turn participating in certain felonies into a murder conviction.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: If someone is killed.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: Felony murder allows for everybody involved in the underlying offense
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  Speaker 3: to be treated by the legal system as if they
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  Speaker 3: committed an intentional murder.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: You could be convicted of murder and be considered a killer,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: even if you weren't present at the same Absolutely, it's
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  Speaker 1: but tens of thousands of people in prison and disproportionately
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: affects people of color. No other developed country follows this
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: law the way we do. England bannit in nineteen fifty seven. Today,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: forty eight states have some version of felony murder. Only
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Kentucky and Hawaii do not. In Florida, more than fifteen
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: hundred people are in prison for felony murder, representing nearly
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: one out of every ten murder convictions in the state.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Ryan Holly's was one of them.
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: Never in my entire childhood did I ever have brushed before. Never, Nope,
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: never been arrested in my entire life.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Then came March tenth, two thousand and three. Ryan was
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: twenty years old living in Pensacola. He and his roommates
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: through a party and I ended up drinking and going
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: to sleep before dawn. A friend named Billy woke him up.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: He was with a few other guys. Ryan says he
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: didn't really know.
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: Billy is asking to borrow the keys to my car.
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  Speaker 4: They're laughing and joking about it, saying that they're going
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: to go commit a robbery, but yet at the same time,
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: they're also talking about going to get food.
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  Speaker 1: What do you tell Billy.
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  Speaker 4: I say yes because he borrowed the keys in my
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: car plenty of times before. And then I went back
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: to sleep.
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  Speaker 1: Less than an hour later, Ryan woke up to a crash.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: His car was in his backyard. The men were burning
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: their clothes. Ryan saw them safe from the back seat.
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: I would never have let them get the damn keyse
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: in my car if I thought they were serious.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: But it was more serious than Ryan knew. During the robbery,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: eighteen year old Jessica Snyder, who'd been at the party
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: just hours before, was beaten to death with the butt
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  Speaker 1: of a shotgun. One of the men found in her house.
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  Speaker 1: Within minutes, police were at Ryan's door.
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  Speaker 4: When the sheriffs came, the first thing I did was
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  Speaker 4: I started crying, and I told him I wanted to
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: talk to him, and what do you say to them?
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: I'd let him know exactly what happened.
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  Speaker 1: He said he had nothing to hide, that he'd done
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: nothing wrong. He was want to read you some things
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  Speaker 1: from this. I read back to him his statement to
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: police about what the men told him before he handed
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: over his keys, And you said, well, they said something
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  Speaker 1: about going over to Jessica's mom's house and I don't know,
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  Speaker 1: beating her up or whatever. So you knew that something
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: bad was about to happen. It's basically what that's saying.
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  Speaker 4: I never took it serious.
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  Speaker 1: Ryan had no idea. He'd just given law enforcement all
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: they needed to charge him with murder. The prosecutor logic
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: fit on a bumper sticker, no car, no crime.
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: I'm in shock, complete shock.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: You had no idea this was coming, no idea. On
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: the day of Ryan's trial, his mother Sylvia, sat in
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: the front row.
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  Speaker 3: I was holding onto a rosary in my hand, and
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  Speaker 3: I could have sworn it was going to go through
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  Speaker 3: my skin.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: I held it so tight. The trial barely lasted eight hours.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Prosecution makes its case, defense makes this case, jury deliberates
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: and comes back with a decision, all in a single day.
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: Yep. By six o'clock that night, I was back in
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  Speaker 4: the county Joe with a natural life sentence.
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  Speaker 1: Even though Ryan had been asleep when Jessica Snyder was killed,
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  Speaker 1: unaware her murder was happening. He received the same sentence
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  Speaker 1: as the man who beat her to death, life without
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: the possibility of parole.
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: Yep, I was like, there's no way.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Ryan's mother turned her outrage into action. H wrotic everybody
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: and anybody that would listen. By twenty fourteen, Ryan's case
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  Speaker 1: caught the attention of Florida's Cleming Sea Board. They held
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: a hearing. Jessica's father and sister argued Ryan should die
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: in prison. Please, we knew our faith in our judicial
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: system by keeping this guy in prison for the rest
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: of his life.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: He made the wrong decisions.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: To this day, he doesn't feel guilty about it. Do
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: you feel like you should accept some culpability at this
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: point that you're somewhat responsible for her death? Yeah, that's
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: that's tough.
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't know, Dan, Yeah something, I
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: still godlive.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, good time. What are you feeling right now? Of
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: course that girl should have died no matter what.
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: Everybody freaking blames me too.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Despite the pleas from Jessica's family, Rick Scott, Florida's governor
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: at the time reduced Ryan's sentence to twenty five years
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: to life.
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: I believe Ryan Holly's case is why we have the
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: authority to commute sentences.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: But Ryan remained in prison for another decade. In December
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, the gates finally opened. His mother was waiting.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: But Ryan's freedom comes with a footnote. Wow, a long one.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: He's on probation for the next decade, with a list
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: of things he's not allowed to do. You can go
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: back to prison for the rest of your life. Yep,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: for being in a bar, even if I'm not even
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: the one drinking. Ryan Holly was released because a governor
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: showed mercy. Now in Alabama, Sonny Burton is waiting to
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: see if Governor k Ivy will do the same for him.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Last month, when she set Burton's execution date, she said
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: she has no current plans to grant clemency in this case,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: but she added she retains her authority to change her
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  Speaker 1: mind at any time. The Alabama Attorney General's office told
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: us in a statement the jury unanimously recommended the death penalty.
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: Are you there?
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Can you hear me? Earlier this week, I tracked down
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: one of those jurors, Priscilla Townshend, when you voted to
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: sentence him to death, you knew that he was not
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: the trigger man, right, Yes, we did. But more than
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: three decades later, Priscilla, who asked that we not show
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: her face, told me she regrets her decision.
• 8:20
  Speaker 5: The death sentence is too harsh for someone that did
• 8:22
  Speaker 5: not pull the trigger.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: How are you going to feel if he doesn't get
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: mercy and he's killed.
• 8:29
  Speaker 5: I feel horrible about it. I don't understand why at
• 8:32
  Speaker 5: the point in time when the other gentleman, when his
• 8:35
  Speaker 5: sentence was lessened, why no one came back and assisted Sonny.
• 8:40
  Speaker 5: It just doesn't make any sense to me at all.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: And Priscilla isn't alone. Five other jurors from Sonny's nineteen
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: ninety two trial have signed sworn affidavit saying they now
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: regret their decision to send him to death, believing the
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: governor should show Burton mercy and save his life. Days ago,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Sonny's lawyer filed a final appeal, this time with the
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: US Supreme Court. The Alabama AG's office replied, saying his
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: death sentence is long overdue. These may be the final
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: public words that people hear from you. The minutes are
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: ticking down on Sunny Burton's life. What do you want
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: people listening to this to know?
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: I won't keep yet listen to me to know that
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: I've been keeled Nobotter These from my last or
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Dan Selepian, NBC News, Well, thank you for watching, and
• 9:41
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• 9:44
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• 9:46
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