MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama is scheduled to execute death row inmate Jeffery Lee by lethal injection this week in a case that brings renewed attention to the state’s former judicial-override system, its shifting execution practices and continuing litigation over how it may put prisoners to death.
Gov. Kay Ivey set a 30-hour execution window beginning at 12 a.m. Thursday and ending at 6 a.m. Friday for Lee, who was sentenced to death in the 1998 killings of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson at a Dallas County pawn shop. The execution would be carried out at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore unless a court issues a stay.
As of early Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court had not publicly issued an order on Lee’s emergency application for a stay. Lee’s application, filed Sept. 11, asks the court to block the lethal-injection execution while he pursues litigation over Alabama’s switch from nitrogen hypoxia, the method he selected, to lethal injection. The Supreme Court’s public docket lists the capital case as No. 26A337…