Gov. Kay Ivey makes her first speech as Alabama governor after the resignation of former Gov. Robert Bentley Monday, April 10, 2017, at the Capitol in Montgomery, Ala. (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey today signed into law a bill that says juries, not judges, have the final say on whether to impose the death penalty in capital murder cases.

Ivey signed the bill, which had been passed by the Alabama House of Representatives on April 4.

Rep. Chris England, one of the legislators who had supported a bill to do away with override confirmed Ivey had signed it into law through a tweet.

Alabama had been the only state that allows a judge to override a jury's recommendation when sentencing capital murder cases.

The bill approved on April 4 was one submitted by Sen. Dick Brewbaker, R-Montgomery. It passed the House on a vote of 78-19 for signature by then Gov. Robert Bentley, who had said he planned to sign it into law after a standard legal review. Bentley, however, didn't get a chance to sign it, resigning Monday amid a sex scandal and a plea agreement with prosecutors.

At least one Alabama judge was happy to see the law changed.

"I'm glad to be stripped of this power," Jefferson County Bessemer Cutoff Circuit Judge David Carpenter told AL.com Tuesday. "Also, this is long overdue. Our Capital Murder sentencing statute would eventually have been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court."

Robert Dunham, executive director of the Washington-D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center, said that the new law is "important" and significant. "Judicial override has been responsible for some of the unfairest and most unreliable death sentences in the United States," he said.

Judicial override was initially designed to prevent runaway juries and an extra level of procedural safeguards to prevent the unjustified imposition of the death penalty, Dunham said. "That has not been the way it has worked historically in Alabama," he said.

"It has been used to impose death sentences against the will of the community and has been disproportionately used in election years in cases of white victims and African am defendants," Dunham said.

Alabama was an outlier with judicial override, becoming the last state to allow its use by judges for overriding life without parole recommendation to impose death, Dunham said. As a result, for a long time the practice has placed Alabama's death penalty statute in constitutional jeopardy, he said.

While the legislature's bill is a step forward, Alabama is still alone on the limb because it is still the only state to allow a non-unanimous jury impose the death penalty, Dunham said. Under Alabama law a jury can vote 10-2 and still recommend death.

Dunham said that all five of the exonerations from Alabama's Death Row over the past several decades had either been the result of an override or the result of a non-unanimous recommendation.

Frank Knaack, executive director of Alabama Appleseed, issued a statement after Ivey signed the bill.

"We should all agree that if we have a death penalty then the process should be fair and accurate. SB 16 will help minimize unreliable and arbitrary death sentences and move Alabama one step closer to ending its outlier status," Knaack stated. "We commend Senator Brewbaker, Senator Sanders, and Representative England for their leadership in this effort. And, we thank Governor Ivey for her quick action to finally put an end to judicial override in Alabama. But, as the American Bar Association pointed out over ten years ago, much work remains before Alabama can consider its death penalty process to be fair and accurate."

England, who had a similar bill in the House, substituted Brewbaker's bill for his on the House floor today, allowing it to get final passage.

Governor Ivey has signed SB16 officially ending judicial override in the State of Alabama. #alpolitics — Chris England (@RepEngland70) April 11, 2017

Alabama's capital murder sentencing law provide two possible sentences - death or life without the possibility of parole. But despite a jury's recommendation judges had been allowed to override the recommendations.

According to the Equal Justice Initiative. Alabama judges have overridden jury recommendations 112 times. In 101 of those cases, the judges gave a death sentence.

England's bill would have also required unanimous consent of all 12 jurors recommend a death sentence. Current law requires at least 10 jurors. That doesn't change, however, under the law passed by the legislature last week.

The bill also doesn't allow the law to be applied retroactively to prisoners already on death row.