Clemency Sought for Death Row Inmate Who Killed Four People

Clemency could be granted to a man who is on death row for killing a fellow inmate while incarcerated for killing his grandmother and two other people! How is that even possible? Well, he changed his life and started saving the lives of others.

According to the Associated Press, 58-year-old Nicholas Sutton was sentenced to death in 1985. He was already serving a life sentence for killing is grandmother and two other men when he was 18 years old.

However, it is said that death row was the first stable environment in which Sutton has ever lived. He is said to have gotten off drugs (to which he was introduced by his father at the age of 12), and sobriety is said to have allowed Sutton to transform his life. He is credited with saving the life of a former correction officer during a prison riot, with assisting another system worker when she slipped and hit her head on the floor, and with preventing an inmate from attacking law enforcement who was working to break up a fight. In addition, Sutton is said to have carried another inmate within the prison after he developed multiple sclerosis and was denied a wheelchair or walker and to have called for medical attention for others.

In the 35 years since he was charged with taking three lives, the number of lives he is said to have enhanced and saved far surpasses the number of lives he ended. His current attorneys point out childhood trauma and abuse that could have led to his poor decisions as a late teen as well as other circumstances regarding his 1985 sentencing. (Get all of the details here.)

His execution is currently set for Feb. 20.

The moral responsibility in this case can be chaotic. Do the lives Sutton's saved warrant him being removed from death row, as rehabilitation is evident; or should his punishment fit his crimes?

What are your thoughts on the case?