A man who was set to be executed in Alabama over a killing that he did not carry out has been spared death after the governor's intervention.
Charles "Sonny" Burton, 75, was sentenced to death for the murder of a man during a store robbery in 1991, even though he was not in the building at the time of the killing.
Burton with five other men robbed the store that day, but he had left the building when one of the other robbers shot a customer. Alabama law, like many other states, allows the execution of a co-felon, even if they themselves did not kill anyone.
The victim's daughter, who was just nine when her father was killed, was among those who pleaded for a reprieve for Burton.
"No one from the State has ever sat with me to explain why Alabama believes it must execute a man who did not kill my father," Tori Battle, whose father Doug Battle was killed in the robbery, wrote in an article published in the Montgomery Advertiser. "My love for my father does not require another death, especially one that defies reason."
