Martin Luther King's son asks Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to halt convicted cop killer's execution
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Martin Luther King’s son has sent a letter to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey asking her to delay Thursday’s execution of a man convicted in the killing of three Birmingham police officers.
“In just 2 days, your state, and the state I was born in, is set to kill a man who is very likely innocent,” Martin Luther King III said in the letter, which was dated Tuesday and obtained by Fox News.
“(Fifty-five) years ago, my father, Martin Luther King, Jr., (led) a march from Selma, Alabama, where he and fellow civil rights activists were killed and beaten,” he said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“Under your watch, Alabama is about to produce yet another tragic injustice.”
Nathaniel Woods Jr., 44, is set to die by lethal injection on Thursday at 6 p.m. at Holman prison in Atmore.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Nathaniel Woods, 44, is slated to die by execution in Alabama at 6 p.m. Thursday. (Alabama Department of Corrections)
On Monday a federal judge rejected his last-minute request for a stay of execution, the Birmingham News reported Tuesday.
Woods was sentenced to death for the 2004 murders of Birmingham officers Carlos Owen, Harley A. Chisholm III and Charles R. Bennett, who were shot to death as they were serving a warrant.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Woods was in the apartment when the officers were killed by another man, Kerry Spencer, who is waiting for execution at a later date.
King said he sought to speak to Ivey on the phone about the case, but the request was denied.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“Killing this African-American man, whose case appears to have been strongly mishandled by the courts, could produce an irreversible injustice,” King said in the letter.
“Are you willing to allow a potentially innocent man to be executed?”
King wrote that Woods never had a chance at a fair trial and was convicted as an accomplice despite the fact that Spencer has always maintained that he acted alone.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“So before you allow the execution of Nathaniel Woods, I urge you to grant him a reprieve,” King wrote. “We must allow time to accurately review the new evidence.
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“In closing, my father said, ‘injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,’ and so I pray that God grants you the courage to do the right thing: to delay his execution,” he said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}An email from Fox News seeking comment from Ivey's office was not immediately returned.