MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A Democratic state representative has prefiled legislation that would let Alabama voters decide whether to abolish the death penalty, thrusting the issue back into the spotlight in a state with one of the nation’s most aggressive execution records and a prison system under federal condemnation for rampant violence.
State Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, filed HB76 ahead of the 2026 legislative session. The measure proposes a constitutional amendment to prohibit capital punishment for any crime and void existing death penalty statutes if approved by voters on the 2028 primary ballot. England also supports companion bills to require unanimous jury verdicts for death sentences and allow resentencing for some of the more than 150 people on Alabama’s death row.
Alabama ranks among the top states for executions in 2025, carrying out lethal injections and using nitrogen hypoxia even after botched procedures drew national scrutiny. The state has executed 81 people since resuming capital punishment in 1983, part of a national trend where a handful of Southern states account for the vast majority of deaths.
Critics highlight DNA exonerations as evidence the system risks killing innocent people. Since 1989, at least 375 individuals nationwide have been cleared by post-conviction DNA testing, including dozens from death row who spent a collective thousands of years imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. Common flaws like eyewitness misidentification, seen in 69% of DNA cases, and false confessions plague capital trials, with more than 200 total death row exonerations documented.
Those errors persist despite safeguards, as biological evidence often goes unpreserved and post-conviction testing faces barriers, likely understating the true scope of wrongful convictions. In Alabama, a history of quick death sentences amplifies concerns that finality trumps accuracy once a verdict is handed down.
The push comes as federal investigators label Alabama’s prisons unconstitutionally cruel, citing extreme violence, sexual abuse, staff brutality and deadly understaffing in facilities run by the Department of Corrections. The U.S. Department of Justice sued the state, reporting routine Eighth Amendment violations and pushing the case into 2026 amid ongoing failures to protect inmates.
Advocates argue a state unable to ensure basic safety in its prisons cannot humanely administer executions, especially with nitrogen hypoxia’s unproven risks and past lethal injection failures. They say the death penalty clashes with a system already deemed brutal, where the same oversight gaps threaten both incarceration and the ultimate punishment.
England’s bill faces long odds in a Republican-controlled Legislature, where some members seek to broaden capital punishment even as national momentum builds against it through repeals and ballot measures. Yet with Alabama’s outsized role in executions and exoneration warnings, the proposal reignites debate over whether the state can justify the irreversible risk in a fallible system shadowed by cruelty.