Larry Stutts and the failure of public trust

Gene Church pushed the stroller of his infant daughter, Logan Rose, through the Alabama Statehouse, asking lawmakers to protect families he would never meet. He could not bring his wife home. He could try to keep another child from growing up without her mother.

That effort became Rose’s Law. Years later, Rose Church’s physician, Larry Stutts, became a state senator, sought to repeal key provisions of the protections her death had helped inspire and asked fellow senators to support him.

Honor requires candor when the truth is personally uncomfortable. Stutts failed that obligation then. His response to new reporting by APR’s Jacob Holmes brings that failure into focus again.

Rose Church was a 36-year-old nurse who died following childbirth in 1998. Gene believed a longer hospital stay and additional testing could have saved her. He sued Stutts and others; the case was settled out of court.

He also sought something that would outlast the lawsuit. The Legislature unanimously passed Rose’s Law in 1999, establishing safeguards that included hospital stays of 48 hours after a normal delivery and 96 hours after a cesarean or complicated delivery, unless the woman consented in writing to earlier discharge. The law also required certain blood work before discharge.

In 2015, Stutts promoted his repeal legislation as a fight against government interference in medical decisions. On Facebook, he described his effort as removing “one-size-fits-all Obamacare-style laws.” Rose’s Law had passed more than a decade before Obamacare.

His colleagues deserved the full history. APR reported that five cosponsors denied knowing of his connection to Rose Church. A sixth said Stutts had disclosed treating the patient but supplied neither her name nor details.

Stutts asked colleagues to trust his judgment while failing to give several of them essential information with which to exercise their own. Whatever his policy argument, that omission betrayed the trust on which public service depends.

On March 31, 2015, following public backlash, Stutts announced he was withdrawing the bill. The retreat ended that repeal effort. It did not answer for his failure of disclosure.

Now Holmes reports that Stutts supplied an affidavit supporting his brother-in-law’s effort to overturn a guilty plea in a child sexual abuse case.

Thomas Alvin Vernor III pleaded guilty in 2024 to sexually abusing a child younger than 12 and received a 12-year prison sentence. Prosecutors dropped two additional counts involving two other children as part of the agreement.

In his affidavit, Stutts said Vernor had maintained his innocence and believed probation was possible. Prosecutors opposed the petition, citing Vernor’s admission at sentencing: “I touched inappropriately (the victim). I am guilty because of that.”

Circuit Judge Ronald Smith found that the original court and defense counsel had failed to ensure Vernor understood the sentencing consequences, making his plea invalid. Those safeguards belong to every defendant, however appalling the charge. The ruling invalidated the plea; it did not establish innocence. Vernor has been released and now faces trial on all three charges, Holmes reports.

Reopening the case also returns all three children’s allegations to court. The child at the center of his original plea, along with the two children whose cases were dropped under the agreement, may now be called to testify. Their privacy and protection remain obligations of a justice system that must also safeguard the defendant’s rights.

Stutts was entitled to provide truthful information supporting his relative’s petition. He is responsible for giving the public a truthful account of that participation.

Responding to an APR inquiry, he said he had “no involvement” in the case.

Yet in the March 2025 affidavit obtained by APR, Stutts identified himself by his elected office as well as his family relationship. He described repeated discussions about the case over months.

An affidavit is involvement.

Identifying his Senate office makes it fair to ask what relevance he believed that office had to his testimony. If his denial was intended to mean something narrower, he owes the public a precise explanation.

Holmes also reports that sources said Stutts sought to have Vernor’s wife, Kathryn Vernor, appointed to Alabama’s three-member parole board. Asked directly whether he had suggested her, Stutts did not answer.

If Stutts recommended her, the public deserves to know what he disclosed about her husband’s conviction. A recommendation for public office is public business. Family loyalty supplies no exemption from answering for it.

Rose’s Law and the Vernor case involve different legal questions. The moral obligation running through both is the same: Stutts owes people a full account when his personal relationships intersect with matters of public concern.

Voters in Senate District 6 should weigh that record on November 3, and they are owed the answers he has not given.

Gene Church carried his grief into public life and sought protection for strangers. That is responsibility beyond oneself—the obligation at the heart of public service.

Stutts should be judged by that standard.

A Senate seat gives a man authority. Only his conduct can make him worthy of trust.