Unless something changes, the State of Alabama will kill Gregory Hunt today as punishment for the 1988 murder, robbery and sexual abuse of Karen Lane.
It is set to be Alabama’s third execution this year, and its third ever by nitrogen gas asphyxiation.
But advocates delivered a petition Monday morning to Gov. Kay Ivey seeking to halt Hunt’s execution in part because he ministers to other inmates on death row.
“Greg Hunt leads a small congregation. Most pastors of churches do. The only difference is that Greg’s group gathers each week on death row,” wrote the two organizations behind the petition, Execution Intervention Project and Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty. “Each person that looks back at Greg has been to hell and back, most of the time because of their own actions. Of course, Greg is also in that number. Such a location makes him as effective as anyone in ministering to his brothers … To say that the men have responded is an understatement. Throughout the hallways and cells, everyone looks to Greg for guidance, whether they go to his service or not. If Greg is executed, then the people of Alabama’s Death Row will lose their pastor as well.”
Hunt does not feign innocence for the murder and robbery of Lane, stating in court filings that a lifestyle of drug abuse led to the brutal killing of the woman who he had been dating for about a month at the time of the murders. But he does claim that he did not sexually abuse her, pointing to evidence presented at his trial that a broom at the crime scene had human cells on it and that the prosecutor implied the cells could be from cervical mucus. Hunt later learned that Lane did not have a cervix as she had previously had a hysterectomy.
The Alabama Attorney General’s office in its filing argued that the pathologist did not testify falsely, but instead “the prosecutor drew an inference from the evidence that, while supported, may have been inaccurate.”
The state also says other evidence still points to Hunt sexually assaulting Lane.
At the time of publication, 2,193 people had signed the petition.
The petition calls on Hunt’s claims of ineffective counsel at trial, arguing that the State of Alabama provides insufficient funding for the compensation of capital defense attorneys.
It also points to Hunt’s traumatic childhood as a mitigating factor.
A jury convicted Hunt in 1990, and voted 11-1 that he be put to death. Alabama and Florida are the only two states in the country with a death penalty that do not require a unanimous decision from a jury to impose the death penalty. Only 10 jurors need to favor the death penalty for the judge to deliver the sentence.
It would be the 23rd execution overseen by Ivey, the second-most of any governor in modern Alabama history behind Bob Riley, who killed 25 people during his tenure. The state had only executed 25 individuals dating back to George Wallace before Riley took office, and Riley and Ivey alone account for nearly two-thirds of executions in the past 60 years.
