'I dodged death': Sitting down with Sonny Burton
Prison staff for the State of Alabama were scheduled to suffocate Charles "Sonny" Burton to death. In an in-person interview with Tread, Burton said God had other plans.
ATMORE, Ala.—It’s hard for Sonny Burton to wipe the smile off his face.
“I dodged death,” he told Tread inside the visitor’s room at Holman Correctional Facility, the maximum-security prison where death row is housed.
It was true. Burton had been just two days away from Alabama prison guards strapping a gas mask to his face and suffocating him, an act of state-sanctioned violence three decades in the making.
Burton, 75, was slated to be executed for the murder of Doug Battle during the robbery of a Talladega AutoZone in 1991. But even prosecutors conceded that Burton did not fire the shot that killed Battle. He did not fire a shot at all. While he had admittedly participated in the robbery, Burton had been outside the building when another man, Derrick DeBruce, shot and killed Battle.
Despite that, under Alabama’s felony murder rule, Burton was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.
More than three decades later, Burton was just two days away from his planned execution. The Alabama Department of Corrections was making its final preparations to secure the man’s death.
But God had other plans, Burton said. He smiled from ear to ear as he took a bite of a Reese’s cup his family had just bought him from the vending machine a few feet away. A can of Coca-Cola and his helmet, issued by the prison to reduce the risks of fall injuries, sat on the table in front of him.
“People keep asking me, and I keep telling them,” Burton said. “I feel good. I feel super good.”
For months, Burton had been praying for mercy. A devout Muslim, he’d been frustrated that his advanced rheumatoid arthritis prevented him from getting on his knees to pray.
“So I’d pray from bed,” he said. “I asked God to soften the governor’s heart.”
The divine intervention Burton had been praying for had come the day before, when Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a term-limited Republican, commuted his death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“I cannot proceed in good conscience with the execution of Mr. Burton under such disparate circumstances,” Ivey wrote in a statement announcing her decision. “I believe it would be unjust for one participant in this crime to be executed while the participant who pulled the trigger was not.”
Burton had been in this very room when he’d received the news. There’d been a flurry of movement outside the visitor’s room, he explained. Guards and other prison staff started high-fiving each other. They began to gather in the windowed hallway that surrounds the room where Burton sat in his wheelchair.
“Sonny got clemency,” he recalled someone screaming. The gathered staff began to clap. Burton couldn’t believe his ears and eyes. He took a deep breath and took it all in.
“A tear was in my eye,” Burton said. “God was with me. God gave me life.”
A week before, the grim reality that his execution date was creeping ever-closer was beginning to set in for Burton. But he wasn’t fearful or nervous.
In an interview with Tread, Burton said he felt at peace.
“God’s got me calm,” he said, his voice slow and deliberate.
But there were a few things on his mind as his appointed death date drew nearer, Burton said.
“I want Doug Battle’s daughter to know that I take full responsibility for what I did that day,” he said. “Full responsibility.”
Then, there was the cloud of the execution itself.
“I really try not to think about it,” he said. “But I do worry about it.”
If Burton’s execution had proceeded, he would have been only the ninth human being subjected to a state-sanctioned nitrogen execution in United States history. Burton had listened to accounts of the suffocations of his brothers on the row. Kenny Smith. Alan Miller. Demetrius Frazier. Carey Grayson. Geoffrey West.
The nitrogen suffocation of Anthony Boyd, the latest to take place in Alabama, was the longest in the method’s history, with Boyd gasping for air more than 225 times before he died.
All of that simmered in the back of Burton’s mind.
“I worry that I’ll still be alive,” he said. “Still alive but struggling to breathe.”
And then there was a final, lingering question.
“What’s on my mind is the governor,” he explained. “Will she grant me clemency?”
Burton made a final appeal. He had a message for Ivey, he told Tread.
“I’m a good person,” he said. “I just made some bad choices.”
If the execution were to proceed, Burton said, he believed that both Ivey and Attorney General Steve Marshall should be required to watch the killing.
“If they want to kill a man, they should have to watch it,” Burton said.
And if the state were to secure his death, Burton said he hoped that people would remember one thing.
“That I didn’t do what the state accused me of doing,” he said. “I ain’t murder nobody.”
A week later, as Burton sat in his wheelchair in Holman’s visitor’s room, he said he’d always believed that Ivey would do the right thing.
“I’ve heard people say that she’s a woman so she can’t do a man’s job,” Burton said. “But I’ve seen what she can do. She did the right thing.”
Not everyone in the state applauded Ivey’s decision to grant Burton mercy. The state’s attorney general said he was “deeply disappointed” in Ivey’s commutation—only the third in the state’s history.
“While the media has done its best to paint Mr. Burton as a harmless, decrepit old man, he is a murderer,” Marshall, who is running for U.S. Senate, said in a statement. “There has never been any doubt that Sonny Burton has Douglas Battle’s blood on his hands.”
Burton’s eyes filled with tears as he listened to Marshall’s statement read aloud.
“Well, he got to me,” he said. “But he’s the one that’s angry. And he lies. I didn’t murder anyone. Doug Battle’s blood is not on my hands.”
Marshall’s comments are a reflection of his own heart, Burton said, not a reflection of Sonny’s.
“Real Christians wouldn’t say things like that,” Burton said of Marshall’s comments. “I don’t believe he’s a Christian.”
Burton thought for a moment. He remembered all of the men he’d known on the row who’d been killed by the state, one after another. 73 men since he arrived on the row. 25 since Marshall became the state’s top prosecutor.
“Their blood is on his hands,” Burton said. “What will Steve Marshall tell God when he meets him? What will he say to Jesus?”
Burton and his family said they are deeply grateful to Gov. Ivey.
Still, they know the realities of the hard road ahead. Burton is still sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, having already served 32 years.
“At least he doesn’t have that cloud over him anymore,” Eddie Mae Ellison, Burton’s sister, said. “It’s a start.”
She and other members of Burton’s family had crisscrossed the state advocating for mercy for their loved one, including holding vigil outside the governor’s mansion in Montgomery.
Burton said he believes Ivey set his execution date before granting him clemency because she wanted him to feel the doom of his impending death.
“She wanted me to suffer,” he said. “She wanted me to know ‘You ain’t getting off that easy.’”
And while, ultimately, Burton believes she did the right thing in commuting his sentence, he said he knows in his heart that justice hasn’t yet been fully served.
“I believe I’ve served my time,” Burton said. “And I ain’t got much longer to live.”
He wants to leave the walls of Alabama’s prisons, Burton said, to spend time with his family and live out his remaining days in peace.
He thinks the sentences of his brothers on the row should be commuted, too, and that the governor should reinstate a moratorium on executions.
And for now, Sonny Burton is simply glad he’s alive to live another day.
“I can see another week now,” he said, his smile brightening the room. “And another week after that. And another after that.”
What a blessing! As an Alabama citizen, I’m glad the state government did the right thing. We have lots more work to do, but I’ll celebrate the wins when they come. Kudos to Death Penalty Action for their hard work on this.
Thank you for always bearing witness, Lee. You continue to amplify the voices we need to hear. Grateful for your work.