Alabama executes Jeffery Lee for 1998 pawn shop killings

Execution carried out

Alabama executed Jeffery Lee by lethal injection Thursday, three months after a federal judge stopped the state from putting him to death with nitrogen gas.

Lee, 49, was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m. at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, state authorities said. His execution was Alabama’s second of the year and the 27th in the United States.

Lee’s final words expressed love for his family and other people on death row. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said justice had been served, while Gov. Kay Ivey said the execution fulfilled a commitment to the victims and their families.

The 1998 killings

Lee was convicted of killing Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson during a Dec. 12, 1998, robbery at Jimmy’s Pawn Shop in Orrville, about 65 miles west of Montgomery. Ellis owned the store, and Thompson worked there. Another employee survived by pretending to be dead.

The jury voted 7-5 to recommend life imprisonment, but the judge overrode that recommendation and imposed a death sentence. Alabama ended judicial overrides in capital cases in 2017, but the change did not apply to earlier sentences.

Lee’s attorneys and supporters sought clemency, arguing that the jury’s life-sentence recommendation should be honored. Ivey declined to intervene.

Change in execution method

Lee had been scheduled to die by nitrogen gas on June 11. A federal judge ruled that Alabama’s nitrogen-gas procedure violated the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to lift that ruling.

The Alabama attorney general’s office sought a new execution date the next day, this time using lethal injection. Lee’s attorneys also challenged that change in method, but the execution proceeded 98 days after the nitrogen-gas execution was canceled.