MIchael Shannon Taylor was sentenced to death for the murders of Ivan and Lucille Moore during a robbery of their home in Gadsden. (Alabama Department of Corrections)
Alabama state officials are seeking to schedule two executions this year, a few weeks after Gov. Kay Ivey commuted an inmate’s death sentence to life in prison.
The Alabama Attorney General’s Office filed a motion Monday with the Alabama Supreme Court to have Michael Shannon Taylor put to death, about a month after it sought to execute Jeffery Lee by nitrogen gas.
“Lee has exhausted his conventional appeals,” the AG’s Office said in its motion that was filed in February. “As such, it is time for his sentence to be carried out.”
The motion to request the execution of Taylor follows the same template as Lee’s.
“There are currently no pending challenges to the validity of Taylor’s convictions and death sentence, and his conventional appeals concluded in 2016,” the motion said.
Lee was convicted of two counts of capital murder in 2000 for his role in the 1998 deaths of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson. According to court documents, Lee and two others robbed a pawn shop in Dallas County. Ellis and Thompson were killed during the robbery, which led to capital murder charges against Lee.
Lee was also found guilty of attempted murder of Helen King.
The jury voted, 7-5, to recommend that Lee be sentenced to life without parole.The judge in the case decided to overrule the recommendation and sentence him to death.
According to court documents, Taylor was convicted of three counts of capital murder in 1993 for his role in the 1991 deaths of Ivan and Lucille Moore during a robbery of their home in Gadsden. The charges were upgraded to capital murder, which carries the possibility of a death sentence, because the victims were killed during a robbery and a third capital charge was added because more than one person was killed.
The jury unanimously recommended that Taylor be sentenced to death..
Earlier this month, Ivey commuted the death sentence of Charles “Sonny” Burton, two days before his execution. Burton had been sentenced to die for the 1991 murder of Doug Battle, a customer killed during the robbery of a Talladega Autozone. Burton participated in the robbery but did not kill Battle. The triggerman, Derrick DeBruce, had his death sentence commuted to life in prison in 2014.
The story has been updated to include the motion by the Alabama Attorney General’s Office to have Michael Shannon Taylor be executed.
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Author: Ralph Chapoco