T.I. is lending his voice and celebrity to help stop the execution of a Black Alabama man scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. on Thursday (March 5.). The rapper posted on his Instagram page to his 12 million followers that there is no time to waste by going through the usual means of digital protest for Nathantial Woods because as a man’s life is at stake. 

Woods was convicted of the 2004 killings of three police officers, however, the 44-year old wasn’t the trigger man. In fact, according to Newsweek, Woods was charged as an accomplice to the crime for allegedly helping to set up an ambush for the officers and under Alabama law that means he can receive  the death penalty. There is some evidence now to show that prosecutors on his case pinned the crime on the wrong man. 

“We must act now!!! This ain’t about race or politics….this is about fair and decent human beings standing up for what’s right,” T.I. wrote in his post. 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s son is also calling on the governor of Alabama to stop the execution of Woods. Martin Luther King III sent a letter to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, which was posted on social media, pleading with him to stop the execution.

"Killing this African American man, whose case appears to have been strongly mishandled by the courts, could produce an irreversible injustice. Are you willing to allow a potentially innocent man to be executed?" King wrote to Ivey.
See the letter below:

Governor Ivey has not responded.
The prosecutors in Woods' case concede that he was not the gunman in the shooting of officers Carlos “Curly” Owen, Harley Chisholm III, and Charles Bennett, but continue to claim that Nathaniel Woods was an accomplice to their murders. According to police reports, the gunman was Kerry Spencer, a friend of Woods.

The events happened on June 17, 2004, writes The Appeal:

Three police officers were shot dead at a drug house on the west side of Birmingham, Alabama. It was a ghastly scene. Officer Charles Bennett lay on his back near the front door with a bullet wound in his face; the semi-automatic rifle that had inflicted it lay strewn nearby. Inside, officers Carlos “Curly” Owen and Harley Chisholm III were sprawled out on the kitchen floor.

One officer, Michael Collins, had run away and survived. He told his colleagues at the Birmingham Police Department that Kerry Spencer and Nathaniel Woods, lifelong friends who had been dealing and using drugs at the pea green one-story house in the Ensley section of the city, were responsible for the killings. Spencer was the shooter but he had not acted alone, police alleged. Woods was charged as an accomplice; in Alabama that’s a capital offense punishable by death.

At his 2005 trial, prosecutors told the jury that Woods hated cops and he masterminded the plan to have the three officers killed. They called witnesses who claimed they overheard him expressing his hatred for the police, and also called on Collins, the officer who escaped the shooting.
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However, Woods' defense attorneys say important information was left out at the trial, including claims that Chisholm and Owen, the officers killed, were accused of profiting off the drug trade in Birmingham for years, taking bribes from dealers. One of those dealers, Tyran Cooper, who operated the drug house that Woods and Spencer were in on the day of the murders, was supposed to testify at Woods’ trial but did not. Cooper told The Appeal he owed the officers money. At Woods’ trial, Spencer testified that the officers had come to the house earlier in the day looking for Cooper. He claimed that he and Woods feared for their lives, and one of the cops was attacking him when he shot. Spencer testified that Woods did not pull the trigger — a fact that hasn't been disputed by anyone from law enforcement or the district attorney's office — and that Woods is "100 percent innocent" of the murders. 

Woods' current attorneys also claim that his lawyers at the time fed their client misinformation about a crucial plea deal that was offered. The Appeal outlines the details:

After Spencer was sentenced to death, then-Jefferson County District Attorney David Barber offered Woods a plea deal that would have resulted in a 20- to 25-year prison sentence. But Woods refused the deal because his attorneys told him the state had to prove he pulled the trigger for him to be convicted of capital murder. This was not true under Alabama law, but Woods trusted his attorneys’ word, according to his 2017 habeas petition. “Mr. Woods did not accept this plea deal because he thought—with counsel’s encouragement—that he would be acquitted of these charges because the evidence would prove that he was not the shooter that day,” reads the filing. 

Kerry Spencer, the man who did pull the trigger on the officers, is still on death row awaiting appeal.
The U.S. Supreme Court turned down Woods' appeal last year.
Only Governor Kay Ivey would be able to stop today’s execution scheduled for later today.