Bentley will not grant Derrick Mason reprieve from death sentence

Gov. Robert Bentley

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama
Gov. Robert Bentley will not commute the death sentence of Derrick Mason, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection Thursday night for the 1994 slaying of a convenience store clerk.
Bentley press secretary Jennifer Ardis said in an email statement this afternoon that Bentley does not plan to intervene.
"The governor will honor the decisions of the jury which recommended the death penalty for Mr. Mason and the trial court which ordered it, which has been repeatedly and consistently upheld by every appellate court which addressed it," Ardis said. "All courts which have been asked to stay the execution have denied that request."
Bentley could have commuted Mason's sentence to life without the chance of parole.
Mason, now 37, was convicted of killing Angela Cagle, 25, at a Sparkman Drive convenience store where Cagle worked in March 1994. The jury recommended on a 10-2 vote that Circuit Court Judge Loyd Little sentence Mason to death.
Little agreed with the jury, but recently asked in a letter to Bentley that Mason's life be spared. Little said he wrote the letter at the request of Mason's appeals lawyers. He said he changed his mind about Mason deserving the death penalty because the circumstances were not worse than other capital murder cases where the death penalty was doled out.
Mason is also awaiting word on a last minute appeal with the Alabama Supreme Court.
He is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Thursday in Holman Correctional Institute in Atmore.