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Alabama has set an April execution date for James Osgood, a 55-year-old death row inmate convicted of the 2010 rape and murder of Tracy Lynn Brown in Chilton County. Osgood asked to be put to death after dropping his appeals last summer and will be executed by lethal injection on April 24.
Osgood will be the second individual put to death in Alabama this year after Demetrius Frazier, 52, was executed in February by the controversial nitrogen hypoxia method.
Osgood’s execution will not be an uncommon occurrence in the state. Alabama consistently has one of the highest execution rates in the country, ranking seventh in most executions despite ranking 24th in total population.
Last year, Alabama put six men to death, making it the state with the most executions in the country in 2024, and tying 2011 and 2009, for the year with the most executions in Alabama since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. In December of 2024, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall celebrated the state’s record execution numbers, writing in a December X post, “This has been a team effort. I would like to thank Commissioner John Hamm and @ALCorrections, as well as my dedicated group of capital litigators, for delivering long-awaited justice for each of these victims.”
However, in a rare move, earlier this month Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey actually acted to reduce the number of executions in the state by commuting the death sentence of Robin D. “Rocky” Myers to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Ivey had never before granted clemency to an Alabama prisoner, and Fob James was the last Alabama governor to commute a death sentence over two decades ago in 1999.
Myers was convicted for the 1991 murder of Ludie Mae Tucker in Decatur, Alabama, but serious questions have been raised concerning his guilt and intellectual capacity.
In announcing her decision to commute Myers’ sentence, Ivey noted the absence of physical evidence linking Myers to the crime scene and the fact that neither of the two eyewitnesses associated with the case identified him as the assailant. Myers also has a diagnosed intellectual disability, with an IQ score between 64 to 73. According to legal precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court, executing an individual with an intellectual disability constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. These factors led Ivey to make the rare move to spare Myers from execution.
