17 September 2018 :

The Alabama Supreme Court has vacated the death sentence imposed on Anthony Lane (Black) and directed that he be resentenced to life imprisonment without parole as a result of intellectual disability. The U.S. Supreme Court had previously reversed the Alabama courts' rulings that had rejected Lane's intellectual-disability claim, saying that the state had applied the wrong standard for determining intellectual disability. Anthony Lane was convicted in 2011 of capital murder during the commission of a robbery in the death of 57-year-old Frank Wright. Based on the jury's recommendation, Circuit Judge Clyde Jones sentenced Lane to death. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Lane's conviction and sentence and the Alabama Supreme Court denied Lane's request to review his conviction on Jan. 30, 2015. Now, the Alabama Supreme Court has reversed the judgement of the Court of Criminal Appeals, which upheld his sentence, and remanded the matter to the trial court to sentence him to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the court said in a ruling issued Friday.