The execution of Nathaniel Woods occurred on March 5, 2020, at Holman Correctional Facility in Alabama. The execution was controversial due to skepticism about his culpability and the fairness of his trial. Woods had surrendered inside a crack house during a police raid that attempted to serve a months-old arrest warrant on Woods. Another man came downstairs and opened fire, killing three officers. Woods ran from the scene after the gunfire erupted.
Despite never pulling a trigger, Woods was accused of being an accomplice and was convicted of capital murder. The same jury voted 10–2 in favor of capital punishment.
Incident
The murders that Woods was convicted of took place on June 17, 2004, in Birmingham, Alabama. Four police officers: Harley Chisholm III, Charles Bennett, Carlos Owen, and Michael Collins, stormed a crack house while Woods and another man, Kerry Spencer, were inside. Spencer grabbed an SKS rifle when he heard the officers, while Woods was in the kitchen. After Woods had surrendered to the officers, Spencer came downstairs to see two officers pointing guns at him. Spencer fired shots at all four police officers, killing three out of the four (Chisholm, Bennett, and Owen). The fourth officer, Michael Collins, was injured but survived. Woods ran out of the house when he heard the gunshots. Spencer and Woods were both charged with the murders, despite Woods never firing a weapon.
Spencer stated Woods was not involved and said, "Nate is absolutely innocent. That man didn't know I was going to shoot anybody just like I didn't know I was going to shoot anybody that day, period."
Trial
Kerry Spencer was tried slightly before Woods and was convicted of murder, with his trial finishing in September 2005. Spencer was sentenced to death, and remains on death row at Holman Correctional Facility awaiting execution as of 2023. Before Woods' trial, he turned down a plea deal of 20 to 25 years in prison. One of his lawyers misinformed him by saying that he could not be given the death penalty as he did not commit the murders. Lauren Faraino, a lawyer and later supporter of Woods criticized his original legal team as being weak and ineffective.
At Woods's trial, despite the city being majority black, only two black jurors were impaneled on the jury due to peremptory challenges from the prosecution of other black jurors. The prosecution conceded that it was Spencer who had opened fire on the officers, but accused Woods of luring them to their deaths while refusing to cooperate with a valid arrest warrant.
Woods was convicted of four counts of capital murder; while there were only three fatalities, one count of capital murder was added for the murder of more than one person. The prosecution presented a letter that Woods had sent to Chisholm's widow, where Woods maintained that he was innocent and that he "did not give a damn" what she and other family members thought. Woods took the stand in his own defense, but rather than offer contrition or commiserate the sorrow of the victim's family's loss as his lawyers had advised him, he instead claimed he had "no feeling about the officers" and that if they needed to take his blood, "so be it". A juror interviewed afterward was surprised by Woods' testimony at sentencing. The jury voted 10–2 in favor of capital punishment. Unlike most states that allow capital punishment, Alabama does not require death sentence verdicts to be unanimous, and Woods was placed on death row.
Controversy and execution
In an open letter, Spencer defended Woods, writing, "Nathaniel Woods doesn't even deserve to be incarcerated, much less executed," taking responsibility for the deaths himself. Spencer also stated that "Nate is absolutely innocent. That man didn't know I was going to shoot anybody just like I didn't know I was going to shoot anybody that day, period."
Bubba Cooper, an associate of Spencer and Woods and the cousin of Woods, later filed an affidavit in 2012 that said that two of the Birmingham police officers involved were crooked cops. According to Cooper, Kerry Spencer and him paid the officers around $1,000 a week in exchange for being allowed to deal and advance notice of buy-and-bust operations of narcotics officers. After Cooper was arrested on attempted murder charges after he was involved in a shoot-out, the deal fell apart after the officers allegedly raised the price. Later, advocates for Woods claim that this raises questions over whether the drug bust was entirely legitimate.