Alabama Attorney General (AG) Steve Marshall—who is running to become a United States senator for Alabama—is unfit to hold public office. And that would be true even for the position of dog-catcher and even if there was a rabid dog rebellion ravaging Alabama—with rabid rapacious dogs rampaging everywhere in the state. He’s too cruel-minded for any position.

Let’s recall first that it was Marshall who, in 2017, spearheaded the charge to get the cynically named “Fair Justice Act” signed into law—legislation which hacksawed fundamental constitutional rights of overwhelmingly indigent death-sentenced defendants; that legislation made it easier for innocent people in Alabama to be convicted and sentenced to death. (While beyond the scope of this essay, on the subject of innocent people on Alabama’s death row, people like Toforest Johnson and Christopher Barbour, it has been AG Marshall and his office steadfastly standing in the way of justice.)

And furthermore, it’s AG Marshall and his office who are pressing for the execution of an intellectually disabled man, Joseph Smith, right now in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.

But back to why AG Marshall is too cruel even to be a dog-catcher. He is a virtual architect of Alabama’s use of “nitrogen hypoxia” or “nitrogen asphyxiation”—the abominable method Alabama’s been experimenting with where the condemned are tortured to death by forced inhalation of nitrogen via a bespoke gas mask, one that is affixed by sadistic executioners.

Back when this abomination—nitrogen-gassing as a method of execution—was first proposed, I reported in The Church of England Newspaper and subsequently republished in Alabama’s Montgomery Advertiser that the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center had posted to his social media account: “The World Society for the Protection of Animals lists nitrogen inhalation as ‘not acceptable’ for animal euthanasia because loss of consciousness is not instantaneous, and dogs euthanized by nitrogen gas have been observed convulsing and yelping after ‘falling unconscious.’”

Since its foray into nitrogen-gassing executions, Alabama has savagely gas-tortured seven men to death—and they were killed worse than dogs—they gasped, writhed, convulsed and choked.

But for a preciously rare-and-last-minute grant of clemency by Governor Kay Ivey, 75-year-old wheelchair-bound, protective-helmet-wearing (because of his chronically painful rheumatoid arthritis) Charles “Sonny” Burton would have been the 8th man savagely gas-tortured to death. (Yet another man was also gas-tortured to death with nitrogen when Alabama exported its abominable and experimental method to Louisiana; other states are now, also, with AG Steve Marshall’s encouragement—really cheerleading—pursuing nitrogen-gassing executions too.)

What was AG Marshall’s response to Ivey’s grant of clemency for Burton? The headline from Heather Gann’s article for al.com announced: “Alabama AG slams Ivey for saving ‘murderer’ from execution: He is not ‘a harmless, decrepit old man.’”

Ivey commuted Burton’s sentence to life without the possibility of parole primarily because she recognized the unfairness of Alabama’s felony murder statute in a case where the triggerman in the underlying robbery ultimately received a life without parole sentence (before dying in prison) and Burton was already outside the robbed business when the victim, unbeknownst to Burton, was shot and killed.

Despite this sound reasoning chiefly underlying Ivey’s decision to grant Burton clemency, Marshall wrote in a news release: “I am deeply disappointed to learn that Governor Ivey has commuted the death sentence of Sonny Burton.”

Now maybe I’m just naïve about politics—especially in Alabama. After Governor Ivey’s commutation of Burton’s sentence, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist John Archibald wrote a column for al.com titled: “Gov. Kay Ivey stands up to the fire spitters.”

Plainly, for Archibald, arch-fire spitter #1 is AG Steve Marshall. Archibald observed “it is worth noting when somebody like Gov. Kay Ivey surprises you with an act of fairness—of grace some would say—knowing that firebrands in her own party will belch embers at the very thought.” But, Archibald went on to opine: “Fairness doesn’t pull in the votes. Vengeance is a campaign strategy.”

Maybe so. But I still believe there are good, conscientious Alabamians who know they can’t let Marshall become a U.S. Senator. He’s much too cruel to even be a dog-catcher and the sooner he’s not an AG, the better too.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)