On March 5, 2020, Alabama executed Nathaniel Woods by lethal injection for the 2004 killings of three Birmingham police officers — Carlos Owen, Harley Chisholm III, and Charles Bennett — who were shot while attempting to serve a warrant at a house where Woods was present.
Woods did not fire the shots that killed the officers. That admission came from Kerry Spencer, who was tried separately, convicted, and sentenced to death for the same shooting. Spencer has said publicly that he alone pulled the trigger and that Woods was unarmed during the confrontation.
Woods was convicted and sentenced to death under Alabama's accomplice-liability law, which allows a person to be held criminally responsible — including for capital murder — for actions taken by another party in the course of a crime they participated in, even without directly causing the deaths themselves.
His case drew renewed national attention in the weeks before his execution, with clemency appeals from public figures and advocacy groups who argued that his role in the incident did not warrant the death penalty. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey declined to intervene, and the execution proceeded as scheduled.
This post has been restored and corrected for accuracy; the original contained a broken date placeholder and an unverifiable dead link. Readers seeking full case details and court history are encouraged to consult primary court records and contemporaneous reporting from outlets such as The Root and the Associated Press.