LaSamuel Gamble, 29, no longer faces the death penalty for his role in the killing of two people...

LaSamuel Gamble, 29, no longer faces the death penalty for his role in the killing of two people on July 25, 1996. Shelby County Circuit Judge J. Michael Joiner ruled that Gamble will have a new sentencing hearing for "a sentence other than death." Joiner's 131-page ruling addressed two issues: Ineffective assistance of counsel because his defense lawyers failed to fully explore Gamble's background for mitigating circumstances in the penalty phase. The greater culpability of Gamble's co-defendant, Marcus Presley, who was sentenced to death in the case but barred from the death penalty by a 2005 Supreme Court ruling. Gamble and Presley were sentenced to death for the shootings of John Burleson and Janice Littleton. The crime was caught almost entirely on the store's security videotape. Presley was 16 and Gamble 19. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that no one under 18 who commits a crime is eligible for the death penalty, Presley, who shot both victims, was removed from Alabama's death row. Joiner noted that evidence presented by Gamble's appeals lawyers, Vanessa Buch and William Montross Jr., painted a lurid picture of a childhood of neglect, parental violence and drug abuse, filth and hunger backed up by medical, social welfare and school records. That material should have been presented in the penalty phase, according to Joiner, but the defense put on no witnesses during that part of the trial.