Former Alabama Governor Urges Use of Clemency, Criticizes Florida’s Execution Process as “Shrouded in Secrecy”

In an August 14, 2025, op-ed in the South Florida Sun Sentinel, for­mer Alabama Governor Don Siegelman revealed he has ​“lived to regret” not com­mut­ing death sen­tences while he was in office, and crit­i­cized Florida’s exe­cu­tion selec­tion process, cit­ing seri­ous con­cerns with secre­cy and racial bias. Writing about two sched­uled exe­cu­tions in Florida — Kayle Bates on August 19 and Curtis Windom on August 28 — Gov. Siegelman argues the cas­es sur­face sys­temic prob­lems in Florida’s death penalty system.

Gov. Siegelman writes that data shows racial dis­par­i­ties in exe­cu­tion pat­terns, not­ing that ​“nation­al­ly, few­er than 41% of homi­cide vic­tims are white, yet 76% of exe­cu­tions since 1976 involved white vic­tims.” Florida’s sta­tis­tics are even more pro­nounced, with ​“88% of all exe­cu­tions involv­ing white vic­tims” and ​“95% of the exe­cu­tions that Florida’s [cur­rent] gov­er­nor has autho­rized involved white vic­tims.” DPI data shows that since 1976, for every 8.3 exe­cu­tions, one per­son has been exon­er­at­ed from death row, and Gov. Siegelman notes this ​“means we have been get­ting it wrong about 12% of the time.”

The tim­ing of Curtis Windom’s death war­rant raised con­cerns for Gov. Siegelman. He not­ed that ​“just two hours after claims by [Kayle] Bates were filed” expos­ing racial dis­par­i­ties in Governor Ron DeSantis’ deci­sions about who to exe­cute next, ​“Florida’s gov­er­nor signed a death war­rant for Curtis Windom.” Both indi­vid­u­als are Black men: Mr. Bates was sen­tenced by a non-unan­i­mous jury for killing a white vic­tim and Mr. Windom for killing three Black vic­tims. According to Gov. Siegelman, Gov. DeSantis ​“used Windom’s death war­rant to defend his non-dis­crim­i­na­tion argu­ment” in Mr. Bates’ case. He not­ed that had Gov. DeSantis not signed Mr. Windom’s exe­cu­tion war­rant, the governor’s racial bias was ​“inde­fen­si­ble.” 

Gov. Siegelman spoke as well to his own past deci­sions, stat­ing, “[a]s gov­er­nor of Alabama, I had a chance to com­mute death sen­tences to life in prison with­out parole. I didn’t and have lived to regret it.” He specif­i­cal­ly ref­er­ences the case of Freddie Lee Wright, writ­ing ​“had I known then what I know now about the abuse of pow­er by pros­e­cu­tors, I would have com­mut­ed his sen­tence and oth­ers to life with­out parole.” The for­mer gov­er­nor argues that regard­less of one’s posi­tion on the death penal­ty, ​“a secret process to select those whom the state exe­cutes erodes the public’s faith that the law is being fair­ly applied.” He con­cludes by not­ing that while he no longer has ​“the con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­er to set wrong to right, it is not too late for Gov. Ron DeSantis” to do so.