Alabama’s third execution of 2024 scheduled for next week

A bag of midazolam, a sedative used in Alabama's method of lethal injection. (Getty)

Alabama is set to carry out its third execution of the year next week.

The state plans to execute Keith Edmund Gavin by lethal injection at some time between midnight on July 16 and 6 a.m. on July 17. Gavin was convicted of  the 1998 murder of William Clayton Jr.

Gov. Kay Ivey set Gavin’s execution date at the end of April. It would be the second death sentence the state will carry out this year by lethal injection. Alan Eugene Miller is scheduled to be executed by nitrogen gas in September.

In January, Alabama put to Kenneth Eugene Smith to death in the first-ever nitrogen gas execution. Jamie Ray Mills was executed by lethal injection at the end of May.

Messages were left with attorneys representing Gavin seeking comment.

A jury convicted Gavin in 1999 of Clayton’s murder. According to court documents, Gavin shot and killed Clayton while he was sitting in a delivery van outside the Regions Bank in downtown Centre, Alabama. Gavin was also convicted of one count of attempted murder after shooting at a law enforcement officer during the incident.

According to court documents, Gavin was convicted in 1982 for a murder in Cook County, Illinois. He had been paroled after serving 17 years of a 34-year sentence prior to the incident in Centre.

The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Gavin’s conviction and sentence and both the state and U.S. Supreme Court declined to review his direct appeal.

Gavin then petitioned for a Rule 32 hearing claiming ineffective assistance of counsel and that the jury had prematurely deliberated on his case. Gavin argued that an expert recruited to help with his case during the penalty phase would have trouble helping with the case, and that his attorneys did not do an adequate job of presenting witnesses who could help lessen the severity of his punishment.

The trial court assigned to hear the Rule 32 appeal dismissed his appeal regarding the jury but allowed for a hearing to determine the merits of his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel during the penalty phase of the original trial.

“The Rule 32 court found that counsel was not deficient for failing to present additional mitigation evidence, concluding that it was Gavin’s and his family’s fault ‘for failing or refusing to cooperate with his trial attorneys and the mitigation specialists,’” according to court documents, and the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the decision.

A federal appeals court also upheld the decision. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2023 declined to hear the case.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Alabama is one of five states that have conducted executions this year. The others are Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. Alabama has executed at least one person every year since 2016. It executed six people in 2009 and in 2011.

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