Alabama killers last words before hes executed for 1998 pawnshop double murder revealed
Alabama executed a man by lethal injection on Thursday for a 1998 double murder, three months after a judge’s ruling blocked the state from putting him to death with nitrogen gas.Jeffery Lee, 49, was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m.at William C.
Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, authorities said.Twenty-seven people have been executed around the US this year.Lee’s execution was the second in Alabama this year.Lee was convicted of killing two people during a Dec.12, 1998, robbery at Jimmy’s Pawn Shop in Orrville, a small town about 65 miles west of Montgomery.Jimmy Ellis, the store’s owner, and Elaine Thompson, a store employee, were shot and killed.
Another employee survived by playing dead.Lee’s supporters and attorneys made an unsuccessful bid for clemency, noting that the jury that convicted him wanted him to receive a life sentence and filing a legal challenge to the change in execution methods.The execution got underway just after 6 p.m.“All is well.I just want to say to my family, I love them.
To my brothers on life row, I love them,” Lee said in his final words.As the injection began, Lee clenched his fists on the prison gurney.His spiritual adviser held Lee’s feet and appeared to pray.Lee closed his eyes and did not appear to open them again.The execution was carried out 98 days after Lee won a last-minute reprieve when a judge ruled the state’s nitrogen gas method violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.Lee had been scheduled to be executed on June 11 by nitrogen gas, but the execution was called off that night when the US Supreme Court declined to lift the judge’s ruling.The decision was a loss for the state, which began using the gas method in 2024.The Alabama attorney general’s office on June 12 filed paperwork to set a new execution date for Lee, this time using lethal injection.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Thursday evening that “justice was finally served.”“In June, after Mr.Lee...