Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, set a first for her term by commuting the death sentence of Robin “Rocky” Myers, 63, to one of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Ms. Ivey had reached out to the office of Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall for information on Thursday and then decided to commute Myers’ sentence for capital murder less than 24 hours later.
On Oct. 4, 1991, Myers was let into the Decatur, Alabama, house of victim Ludie Mae Tucker, 69 at the time, after claiming he had been in a car wreck and needed to call his family. The man proceeded to stab Tucker and a guest in her house, Marie Dutton, before fleeing with her videocassette recorder in order to sell it for crack cocaine, Mr. Marshall wrote in a letter to Ms. Ivey.
In a statement to multiple outlets including WSFA-TV, Ms. Ivey, who has presided over 22 prior executions, explained that she was not certain enough of Myers’ guilt to condemn him to death.
“For example, no murder weapon was found, and no DNA evidence or fingerprints or other physical evidence tied Mr. Myers to the scene of the crime. Although Ms. Tucker knew Mr. Myers and let her attacker inside the house, neither she nor Marie Dutton — the only two eyewitnesses to the crime — ever identified Mr. Myers as the assailant,” the governor said.
Tucker, who lived near Myers, said at the hospital before dying that she had been attacked by a “short and stocky” Black man.
Myers was ultimately convicted of murder during the course of a robbery and during the course of a burglary in 1994, and sentenced to death.
The other circumstantial evidence used to tie Myers to Tucker’s death, Ms. Ivey said, was riddled with too many conflicting claims from different parties.
“This decision has been one of the most difficult decisions I’ve had to make as governor. But it pales in comparison to the pain and suffering Ludie Mae Tucker and Marie Dutton endured on the night of October 4, 1991 – and to the many hardships the Tucker family has endured at the hands of our imperfect justice system,” Ms. Ivey added.
For his part, Mr. Marshall, who along with his predecessors had defended the death sentence for Myers over the course of more than 30 years, was stunned.
“I am astonished by Governor Ivey’s decision to commute the death sentence of Rocky Myers and am bewildered that she chose not to directly communicate with me about this case or her decision. … My capital litigation and victims’ services teams will go home tonight deeply saddened, not for themselves, but for the family of Ludie Mae Tucker. We will never stop fighting for justice,” he wrote in a release Friday.
Myers’ legal representation, on the other hand, cheered the decision.
“I’m not sure there are words enough to convey my joy, relief, and gratitude at learning of Gov. Ivey’s decision to commute Mr. Myers’ sentence,” lawyer Kacey Keeton told The Associated Press.
The commutation, Ms. Ivey’s first since taking office in 2017, was also the first death sentence to be commuted to life in prison in Alabama since 1999.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.