Under the Code of Alabama, Section 13-11-2 (1975), the requisite intent to kill could not be supplied by the felony murder doctrine.

Under the statute, the judge was specifically prohibited from giving the jury the option of convicting for the lesser-included offense.

[1] Absent the statutory ban on such an instruction, Beck's testimony would have entitled him to an instruction on felony murder In the lower courts, Beck attacked the ban on the grounds that the Alabama statute was the same as the mandatory death penalty statutes that the Court had been striking down in recent holdings.

Though the lower courts disagreed, the Supreme Court held that the death sentence may not constitutionally be imposed after a jury verdict of guilt of a capital offense where the jury was not permitted to consider a verdict of guilt of a lesser included offense.

[2] As a result, the convictions of eleven men on death row were overturned, including Beck's.