Alabama carries out execution of Jeffery Lee for 1998 double murder at pawnshop

ATMORE, Ala. (AP) — 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 Dec. 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.

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.

Ruling blocked Alabama from using nitrogen gas method

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 U.S. Supreme Court declined to lift 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 attempted to avoid his deserved death sentence, I reaffirmed my commitment that justice would ultimately be served,” Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey also said in a statement. “Tonight, that promise was fulfilled for his victims, Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson, as well as for their loved ones who have long-awaited his sentence to be carried out.”

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.

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.” They gathered in a vigil Thursday night outside the Alabama Governor’s Mansion.

“His death sentence rested solely on judicial override — an old law that Alabama has repealed,” Lee’s attorneys said in a statement after the execution. “The State itself concluded this practice was wrong enough to abandon yet still put a man to death under it. That is a moral failure, not just a legal formality.”

Ivey, who declined to intervene, said in her statement that the case “underscores exactly why” the law passed in 2017 did not apply to existing death sentences

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 stay request

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon denied Lee’s request to stay the execution to consider if the state was allowed to make the switch to lethal injection. Justices turned back the request without comment.

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 was bound by the terms of that agreement to not use lethal injection. The state attorney general’s office asked the high court to let the execution proceed, arguing that nothing precludes the switch to lethal injection.

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.

Kim Chandler, The Associated Press