MLK's Son Seeks to Stop Execution of Man Convicted of Murdering 3 LEOs

The son of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as family members of a condemned Alabama inmate, are asking the governor to stop Thursday's execution of the man convicted in the 2004 killing of three police officers but who was not the trigger man.

Nathaniel Woods is scheduled to be executed by injection March 5 at a south Alabama prison, reports the Associated Press .

Woods and co-defendant Kerry Spencer were convicted of capital murder for the 2004 killings of Birmingham police officers Carlos Owen, Harley A. Chisolm III and Charles R. Bennett. Spencer was also sentenced to death for the killings.

Prosecutors said the officers were gunned down in an ambush as they tried to serve a misdemeanor warrant on Woods at a home where he and Spencer sold crack cocaine.

Family members on Wednesday planned to deliver letters to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to request to stop the execution.

“There is no evidence that there was any plan or scheme to kill the police officers; they were killed by one man (Spencer) acting alone," a news release about the letters stated.

Martin Luther King, III sent Gov. Ivey a March 3 letter “pleading with you not to execute Nathaniel Woods." King wrote on Twitter Tuesday that the execution is an “injustice."

Prosecutors in 2005 maintained that Woods helped set an ambush for the officers even though Spencer was the trigger man.