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Alabama carried out an execution by lethal injection Thursday evening, ending a months-long legal battle over the method of carrying out Jeffery Lee’s death sentence. Lee, 49, was put to death at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in south Alabama for a double homicide during a 1998 pawnshop robbery in rural Dallas County.
Lee’s execution had originally been scheduled for June 11 using nitrogen gas, a newer and controversial method intended to replace lethal injection. However, a judge halted those plans, prompting Alabama authorities to reschedule and switch to the traditional chemical injection. Lee had requested execution by firing squad, but Alabama law does not permit that option.
Before the injection was administered just after 6 p.m., Lee expressed love for his family and fellow inmates on death row. He was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m.
Legal efforts to prevent Lee’s execution emphasized that the jury in his trial had recommended life imprisonment, but the judge overrode that decision and imposed the death penalty. Lee’s attorneys also argued against the state’s ability to change execution methods after an agreement had been made to use nitrogen gas.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied a last-minute stay of execution on Thursday.
The crime occurred on December 12, 1998, at Jimmy’s Pawn Shop in Orrville, Alabama. Lee entered the store, asked to look at wedding rings, and left, telling staff he would return after getting money from his grandmother.
When he came back armed with a sawed-off shotgun, he shot and killed the store owner, Jimmy Ellis, and employee Elaine Thompson. A third employee survived by pretending to be dead and called 911 after Lee fled.
Ellis, known for his striking Elvis Presley-like singing voice, performed nationwide as the masked singer Orion and was the subject of a 2015 documentary.
Convicted in 2000 of capital murder and attempted murder, Lee is among roughly two dozen Alabama inmates sentenced to death despite jury recommendations for life without parole. Alabama abolished judicial override in 2017 to prevent judges from overruling jury sentencing in capital cases, but the change was not applied retroactively, leaving Lee and others ineligible for resentencing.
Supporters of Lee held a rally earlier this week at the Alabama Capitol urging Governor Kay Ivey to commute his sentence in accordance with the jury’s original recommendation. A spokesperson for the governor confirmed no clemency is planned, noting that the 2017 law preserved existing death sentences to honor commitments made to victims’ families.
Lee had challenged Alabama’s lethal injection protocol in court, then agreed to nitrogen gas as his preferred execution method after the state adopted it. His legal team argued that Alabama was legally bound by this agreement and should not have reverted to lethal injection. The state attorney general’s office countered that switching methods is lawful and emphasized the long wait for justice.
Lethal injection has been the primary execution method in Alabama for many years, but difficulties in obtaining drugs have led the state to explore alternatives like nitrogen hypoxia, which causes death by oxygen deprivation through a gas mask. Despite these developments, lethal injection remains the main method for carrying out death sentences in Alabama.