On Tuesday, Gov. Kay Ivey commuted 75-year-old Charles “Sonny” Burton’s death sentence to life in prison without parole, days before he was set to be executed for a 1991 robbery that left a customer dead.

Burton was one of six men involved in the armed robbery of an AutoZone in Talladega, Alabama, when customer Doug Battle was shot and killed. The gunman, Derrick DeBruce, fired the fatal shot; Burton had already walked out of the store and was waiting by the getaway car, according to court records and the state’s own filings.

“I didn’t assist nobody. I didn’t aid nobody. I didn’t tell nobody to shoot nobody,” Burton said in a recent phone interview with NBC News.

Under Alabama’s felony murder laws, everyone involved in certain felonies—like robbery—can be treated as if they pulled the trigger when someone dies. Prosecutors cast Burton as a ringleader, and a jury sent him to death row, even as DeBruce’s sentence was later reduced to life without parole after a court found his lawyer had been ineffective.

That sentencing gap became central to Ivey’s decision. In a statement, she called it “unjust” that Burton faced execution while the man who actually killed Battle would live out his days in prison.

Burton, who has spent more than three decades at Holman Correctional Facility and maintains he never expected anyone to be killed, said he was grateful for the governor’s choice. “Thank you, Governor,” he said, adding that clemency may not sound like much to outsiders, but it means everything to him.

The victim’s daughter, Tori Battle, also vocalized her disapproval of Burton’s death sentence in an op-ed published late last year.

“As a child, I believed justice meant punishment. I hated all six men involved and thought that witnessing executions would bring closure. As I have grown older, I have come to understand that justice is not about vengeance. It is about truth, proportionality, and fairness,” wrote Tori in The Montgomery Adviser.

“No one from the State has ever sat with me to explain why Alabama believes it must execute a man who did not kill my father,” she continued.

Burton’s case spotlights how far felony murder laws can go—and how rarely death sentences are pulled back once the state sets an execution date.