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Keith Edmund Gavin, a 64-year-old Alabama death row inmate, is set to be executed by lethal injection this Thursday at 7 p.m. ET at the William C.
Holman Correctional Facility. This event will mark Alabama’s third execution of the year.
Gavin was found guilty of capital murder in connection with the March 1998 shooting death of delivery driver William Clayton Jr., who was attacked while parked outside a bank, using an ATM to withdraw money for a dinner outing with his wife. Previously, Gavin had been convicted of murder, for which he served 17 years of a 34-year sentence before being paroled, and attempted murder for shooting at a police officer, factors that contributed to his capital murder charge.
A jury, by a 10-2 vote, recommended the death sentence for Gavin, which the trial court upheld. The execution date was set by Governor Kay Ivey at the end of April. Although Gavin made a recent plea on July 12 to delay the execution, it was denied this past Tuesday.
A lawsuit earlier in the year revealed that Gavin, a devout Muslim, requested no autopsy be carried out post-execution due to his religious beliefs. He believes that the human body should remain intact as a sacred temple, and an autopsy would violate these principles.
Despite the controversies surrounding the lethal injection method, involving issues such as botched executions and drug shortages, Alabama has introduced nitrogen gas as a new execution method. Gavin, however, is scheduled for the more traditional lethal injection.
Previously in the year, Alabama conducted executions in January and May, with another planned for September. The introduction of nitrogen gas as an alternative method follows difficulties with lethal injections, including technical problems during executions and an overall scarcity of necessary drugs.