An Alabama man, Keith Edmund Gavin, is facing a scheduled execution on Thursday night for the murder of delivery driver William Clayton Jr. in Cherokee County. Gavin, 64, is set to receive a lethal injection at a prison in southwest Alabama for the shooting death of Clayton, who was killed during an attempted robbery at an ATM in downtown Centre on March 6, 1998.
Gavin, who is Muslim, successfully filed a lawsuit to prevent a post-execution autopsy, citing religious beliefs. The state agreed to forgo the autopsy in Gavin's case. Prosecutors stated that there was no doubt about Gavin's guilt and the severity of his crime, as he had a prior conviction for murder in Illinois.
Despite claims of ineffective counsel during his sentencing hearing due to a violent and abusive childhood, Gavin's death sentence was upheld by a federal appeals court. He had been handling his own appeals and made a last-minute request to halt the execution, which was denied by the Alabama Supreme Court.
Death penalty opponents delivered a petition to Gov. Kay Ivey seeking clemency for Gavin, questioning the fairness of his trial and highlighting the declining trend of executions in most states. If carried out, this would be Alabama's third execution this year and the 10th in the nation, with other states like Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Missouri also conducting executions in 2021.
The US Supreme Court recently intervened to halt the execution of a Texas inmate just minutes before it was scheduled to take place, indicating ongoing debates and legal challenges surrounding the use of the death penalty in the United States.
