By Alisha at Amplify
Black History Month is often framed around progress, landmark rulings, civil rights victories, and moments when the law finally caught up with justice. But in Alabama, some of the most consequential chapters of that history remain unresolved.
Jeffery Lee remains under a death sentence imposed not by a jury, but by a judge using Alabama’s now-abolished judicial override law. The jury in Mr. Lee’s case voted for life. The state overruled that decision.
Judicial override allowed judges to impose death sentences even when juries rejected them, a practice Alabama repealed in 2017 after years of criticism for its arbitrariness, unreliability, and susceptibility to political and racial bias. Alabama was the last state in the country to eliminate it.
Override did not exist in a vacuum. It emerged during an era when Black defendants were disproportionately sentenced to death, often in cases where juries showed hesitation about imposing the ultimate punishment. Judicial override gave judges the power to impose death anyway, a power the state has since disavowed, but not undone.
Alabama fixed the law. Jeffery Lee is still paying the price for when it was broken.
During Black History Month, states routinely acknowledge past injustices without confronting their present consequences. Mr. Lee’s case raises a stark question: What does it mean to recognize injustice if the people harmed by it remain trapped inside its legacy?
With Governor Kay Ivey expected to set additional execution dates following the scheduled execution of Sonny Burton, the urgency surrounding Mr. Lee’s case continues to grow. His sentence stands as a direct artifact of a system Alabama has rejected, yet continues to enforce.
Mr. Lee’s legal team and advocates are available for interviews and can provide court records, historical context on judicial override, and expert analysis on how the practice functioned as a modern extension of earlier inequities in capital sentencing.
