An execution date has been set for a man convicted in the 1998 killing of a delivery driver at an ATM in northeast Alabama. Governor Kay Ivey announced that Keith Edmund Gavin, 64, will be put to death by lethal injection within a 30-hour time frame beginning at 12 a.m. on July 18 and ending at 6 a.m. on July 19. The state Supreme Court authorized the execution following Governor Ivey's announcement.
Gavin was convicted of capital murder in the shooting death of William Clayton Jr. on March 6, 1998, in the town of Centre. Clayton, a delivery driver, was fatally shot by Gavin during an attempted robbery while he was withdrawing money from an ATM to take to his wife for dinner. An investigator with the district attorney's office witnessed the shooting and began pursuing Gavin, who then fled in Clayton's van after shooting at the investigator.
Gavin was apprehended shortly after the incident, and Clayton was pronounced dead at a hospital. Two eyewitnesses, including the investigator and Gavin's cousin who was present during the shooting, identified Gavin as the suspect in Clayton's murder. In 1999, a jury voted 10-2 in favor of sentencing Gavin to death. Prior to this conviction, Gavin had served 17 years of a 34-year sentence in Illinois for murder before being released on parole shortly before Clayton's death.
Alabama has also scheduled an execution date for Jamie Mills, who was convicted in the 2004 killing of a couple during a robbery. Mills is set to be put to death by lethal injection on May 30.
