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In the spring of 1997, four young men in a car near Montgomery, Ala., cut off a second vehicle with two men inside, intending to rob them. During a brief gun fight, the driver of the second car was killed. Prosecutors charged all four men in the first car with capital murder, but only one received a death sentence. How Shonelle Jackson was singled out raises -- yet again -- troubling questions about the fairness of the death penalty, and especially about Alabama's peculiarly arbitrary judicial override system.
Alabama is one of three states that allow judges to second-guess a jury's recommendation of life in prison and change it to a death sentence. Delaware and Florida also allow...