Jeffery Lee has been executed in Alabama just three months after a judge’s ruling blocked the state from putting the 49-year-old to death with the controversial nitrogen gas method
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 U.S. this year. Lee’s execution was the second in Alabama this year.
Lee was convicted of killing two people during a December 12, 1998, robbery at Jimmy’s Pawn Shop in Orrville, a small town about 65 miles (105 kilometers) 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.
The execution got under way just after 6 p.m. and Lee’s final words were: “All is well. I just want to say to my family, I love them. To my brothers on life row. I love them.”
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.
Lee was scheduled to be executed in June by nitrogen gas, but the execution was halted when a judge ruled the state’s nitrogen method violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The Alabama attorney general’s office immediately filed paperwork to set a new execution date for Lee, this time using lethal injection.
Lee’s attorneys and supporters made an unsuccessful bid for clemency, noting the jury in his case had made a recommendation of life imprisonment, which the judge overrode. His attorneys also argued in court that the state should not be legally allowed to switch execution methods.
A jury voted 7-5 to give Lee a sentence of life imprisonment. However, a judge overrode that and sentenced him to death.
In 2017, Alabama abolished judicial override and stopped allowing judges to change juries’ sentencing decision in capital cases. But the law was not retroactive. Supporters of Lee’s clemency bid held a rally Tuesday outside the Alabama Capitol under the banner, “HONOR THE JURY.”
Two killed in 1998 pawnshop robbery
The surviving witness testified that Lee entered the store, asked to see wedding rings and said he would be back after getting money from his grandmother. Lee returned a short time later with a sawed-off shotgun and shot Ellis, Thompson and the other employee. The surviving witness fell to the floor, pretending to be dead, and called 911 once Lee left the store.
Ellis, a singer whose voice resembled Elvis Presley’s, had gained a national following for a time as an Elvis impersonator. He performed as the masked singer “Orion” and was the subject of a 2015 documentary.
Lee was convicted in 2000 of capital murder and attempted murder.
Supreme Court turns back on stay request
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday denied Lee’s request to stay the execution to consider if the state could make the switch to lethal injection. Justices turned back the request without comment. The ruling came about six hours before the scheduled lethal injection.
Lee filed a lawsuit in 2016 challenging the state’s lethal injection protocol. After Alabama authorized nitrogen as an execution method, Lee selected it as his preferred method. He agreed to dismiss the lethal injection lawsuit in 2018 because the state agreed that “if he is to be executed, defendants will carry out that execution by nitrogen hypoxia.”
Lee’s lawyers argued the state is bound by the terms of that agreement to not use lethal injection. They said the state could revise its nitrogen protocol to make it constitutional or use a firing squad.
“I feel like they owe me their word because they came into agreement in 2018 that wouldn’t do what they are trying to do now,” Lee said in audio clips released by his team.
The state attorney general’s office asked the high court to let the execution proceed, arguing that nothing precludes the switch to lethal injection.
“An unpunished murder is an intrinsic and ongoing harm to those interests and to the rule of law. Nearly twenty-eight years is decades too long,” lawyers with the attorney general’s office wrote.
For decades, lethal injection was the generally preferred U.S. execution method until problems procuring and administering the drugs led states including Alabama to consider alternatives.
Lethal injection remains Alabama’s primary execution method. But in 2024, the state began carrying out some executions using nitrogen gas, which involves replacing breathable air with gas through a respirator mask, causing death from lack of oxygen. Nitrogen has now been used in seven executions in Alabama and one in Louisiana.
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