Alabama set to execute man for pawn shop killings months after his nitrogen gas execution blocked

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama is set to execute a man Thursday night via lethal injection, three months after a judge’s ruling blocked the state from putting him to death with nitrogen gas.

Jeffery Lee, 49, is scheduled to receive an injection beginning at 6 p.m. at south Alabama’s William C. Holman Correctional Facility for killing two people during a 1998 pawn shop robbery in rural Dallas County.

The state initially sought to execute Lee on June 11 using gas. But after a judge stopped that plan, the Alabama attorney general’s office immediately filed paperwork seeking the new execution date for Lee, this time by the chemical injection method.

Lee and his supporters have made a final bid to spare him, noting the jury in his case had made a recommendation of life imprisonment, which the judge overrode. His attorneys also argued in court that the state should not be legally allowed to switch execution methods.

Twenty-six inmates have been executed around the U.S. to date this year, including a Texas man given a lethal injection for his conviction in a triple murder at his neighbor’s home. Elsewhere, a judge blocked plans Wednesday by the state of Georgia to execute a man who killed two real estate agents.

Two killed in 1998 pawn shop robbery

The double murder occurred on Dec. 12, 1998, at Jimmy’s Pawn Shop in Orrville, a small town west of Selma. Jimmy Ellis, the store’s owner, and Elaine Thompson, a store employee, were shot and killed. Another employee survived by playing dead.

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.

Jury voted 7-5 for life in prison

Lee is one of about two dozen people on Alabama’s death row who were sentenced to death despite jury recommendations they receive life sentences.

The jury that convicted Lee of capital murder voted 7-5 to recommend a sentence of life without parole, but the trial judge overrode them 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, leaving Lee and others on death row.

Supporters of Lee’s clemency bid held a rally Tuesday outside the Alabama Capitol under the banner, “HONOR THE JURY.”

Lee’s lawyers contest switch in execution method

Lee’s attorneys have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the execution to consider if the state may switch to lethal injection.

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 is bound by the terms of that agreement to not use lethal injection. They said the state could revise its nitrogen protocol to make it constitutional or use a firing squad.

“The petition asks this Court to determine whether the State may execute Mr. Lee by lethal injection notwithstanding its prior representation that it would execute him by nitrogen hypoxia,” his attorney wrote in a filing with the high court.

The state attorney general’s office asked the high court to let the execution proceed, arguing that nothing precludes the switch to lethal injection.

“An unpunished murder is an intrinsic and ongoing harm to those interests and to the rule of law. Nearly twenty-eight years is decades too long.” lawyers with the attorney general’s office wrote.

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.