Death Row Inmate Executed in Alabama for 1998 MurderDeath Row Inmate Executed in Alabama for 1998 Murder Atmore, Alabama – Keith Edmund Gavin, 64, was pronounced dead at 6:32 p.m. CDT on Thursday night after receiving a lethal injection at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in southwest Alabama. Gavin was convicted of fatally shooting a delivery driver during an attempted robbery in 1998. The Crime On March 6, 1998, William Clayton Jr., a 68-year-old courier driver, was shot and killed by Gavin in Cherokee County. According to trial testimony, Gavin attempted to rob Clayton, shot him, pushed him into his van, and drove away. Legal Proceedings Gavin, who represented himself in his appeals, filed a handwritten request to the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay of execution on Wednesday. However, the request was denied without comment less than an hour before the scheduled execution. Gavin raised arguments that a circuit court had wrongfully denied an earlier appeal. However, the state attorney general’s office responded that these arguments were without merit. Clemency Plea Denied Death penalty opponents had sought clemency for Gavin, citing questions about the fairness of his trial and the declining trend of executions. However, Governor Kay Ivey denied the request. Execution Gavin’s execution is the 10th in the U.S. this year and the third in Alabama. The Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center has criticized the way states carry out executions. The Supreme Court recently ruled that Texas cannot execute an inmate 20 minutes before his scheduled lethal injection.
KIM CHANDLER, Associated Press
14 minutes ago
Abraham Bonowitz of Death Penalty Action and Esther Brown of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty in Alabama stand with other death penalty opponents during a rally outside the Alabama Capitol on Tuesday, July 16, 2024, in Montgomery, Alabama. (AP Photo/Kim Chandler)
ATMORE, Alabama (AP) — A man convicted of fatally shooting a delivery driver during an attempted robbery in 1998 was executed Thursday night in Alabama.
Keith Edmund Gavin was pronounced dead at 6:32 p.m. CDT after being injected with a chemical at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in southwest Alabama, authorities said. The 64-year-old inmate was convicted of first-degree murder in the shooting death of William Clayton Jr. in Cherokee County.
Gavin, who was handling his own appeals, filed a handwritten request with the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday seeking a stay of execution. But the nation’s high court denied his request without comment, less than an hour before the scheduled start of proceedings at 6 p.m. CDT. The state attorney general’s office responded that the inmate’s arguments that a circuit court wrongly denied an earlier appeal were without merit.
Clayton, a courier driver, drove to an ATM in downtown Centre on the evening of March 6, 1998. He had just finished work and wanted to get money to take his wife out to dinner, according to a summary of testimony at the trial.
Prosecutors said Gavin shot Clayton during the attempted robbery, pushed him into the passenger seat of the van he was driving and drove away in the vehicle. A police officer testified that he began chasing the van and that the driver — a man he later identified as Gavin — shot him before running away into the woods.
Clayton, 68, was a retired railroad employee and a veteran of the Korean War, according to a 1998 obituary published by The Birmingham News.
At the time of the killing, Gavin was on probation in Illinois after serving 17 of his 34-year sentence for murder, court documents show.
“There is no doubt about Gavin’s guilt or the seriousness of his crime,” the Alabama attorney general’s office wrote in its request for an execution date for Gavin.
Alabama last week agreed in Gavin’s case to waive the post-execution autopsy normally performed on executed inmates in the state. Gavin, who is Muslim, said the procedure would violate his religious beliefs. Gavin had filed a lawsuit seeking to halt plans for an autopsy, and the state settled the complaint.
A jury convicted Gavin of first-degree murder and voted 10-2 to recommend a death sentence, which a judge imposed. Most states now require a jury to agree unanimously to impose a death sentence.
A federal judge ruled in 2020 that Gavin did not have a sufficient attorney at the hearing because his original attorneys failed to provide mitigating factors for Gavin’s violent and abusive childhood.
Gavin grew up in a “gang-ridden housing project in Chicago, where he lived in overcrowded, dilapidated housing, surrounded by drug activity, crime, violence and riots,” wrote U.S. District Judge Karon O. Bowdre.
A federal appeals court overturned the decision, leaving the death penalty in place.
Death penalty opponents delivered a petition to Gov. Kay Ivey on Wednesday asking for clemency for Gavin. They argued that there were questions about the fairness of Gavin’s trial and said Alabama was bucking the “declining trend of executions” in most states.
It was the 10th execution in the U.S. so far this year and the third in Alabama, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma and Missouri have also carried out executions this year. The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit does not take a position on the death penalty but has criticized the way states carry out executions.
The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the state of Texas cannot execute an inmate 20 minutes before he was to receive a lethal injection.
