On April 26— Keith Edmund Gavin, who was found guilty of killing runner William Clayton Jr. in 1998 and sentenced to death by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, will be put to death in July.
Gavin is going to be put to death by lethal injection at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore between midnight on July 17 and 6 a.m. on July 19.
Alabama messed up some lethal shots and had to stop them because they couldn’t be done before midnight on the dates they were supposed to happen. This gave them more time to carry out the execution.
Gavin will not be put to death by nitrogen hypoxia but by a mix of three drugs. As of January, the UN Human Rights Commission said that the nitrogen method had not been tried and that the people who were going to be executed might be subjected to “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or even torture.”
Death orders were only valid for 24 hours when they were issued by the state Supreme Court. Now, the government decides when people will be put to death.
He died in March 1998. His name was William Clayton Jr.
The murder was made serious because Gavin did it while he was robbing someone in the first degree. He was given the death penalty.
A document from the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals says Clayton was a contract messenger who was shot and killed outside of Regions Bank in Center just after 6:30 p.m. on March 6, 1998. He was sitting in a Corporate Express Delivery Systems van at the time.
Lawrence Twilley, a witness, said he saw Gavin open the van door and shoot the driver twice. This witness said that the shooter pushed the driver to the passenger side of the van, got inside, and drove off.
Gavin was later named by Twilley as the shooter.
According to the court document, Gavin’s cousin Dewayne Meeks saw the crime and said that Gavin was the one who did it.
Meeks said he drove Gavin from Chicago to Tennessee because Gavin told him he wanted to find a woman he met in February.
Meeks said in court that he saw Gavin get out of their car and walk up to a van in Center, Alabama. He thought Gavin would ask the van driver how to get there.
He said Gavin shot the van driver instead. Meeks said he saw Gavin shoot the car driver twice.
Soon after Gavin killed Clayton with a gun, Meeks said Clayton ran away while Gavin followed in a van and tried to get Meeks to stop.
Meeks said he was scared and wouldn’t stop, so he went back to Chicago.
Meeks was also charged with murder with the death penalty at first, but that charge was later dropped.
