Cherry v. State

PARKER, Justice.

I

On the morning of September 15, 1963, a Sunday, 11-year-old Denise McNair and Addie Mae Collins, Carole Peterson, and Cynthia Wesley, all 14 years old, were in the basement of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, changing into their choir robes. At 10:19 a bomb exploded, killing these four children and injuring 20 other people.

In 1977, Robert Chambliss was convicted of the girls’ murder and was sentenced to life in prison. In 2001, a second participant, Thomas Blanton, Jr., was convicted of their murder and was sentenced to life in prison. On May 22,…