Execution date set for Alabama man convicted in 1993 shooting, robbery

An execution date for an Alabama man convicted of a shooting three decades ago is set for next month.

Casey A. McWhorter is set to die for the 1993 shooting death of Edward Lee Williams in Marshall County. He has been on Alabama Death Row since 1994, after a jury voted 10-2 for him to be executed.

Gov. Kay Ivey on Wednesday set a 30-hour time frame for the execution to occur, meaning the 49-year-old can be put to death via lethal injection at any point during that period.

That time frame begins 12 a.m. Thursday, November 16, and ends at 6 a.m. on Friday, November 17.

The time frame comes after a new state rule allows for an execution warrant to be issued for a “time frame” rather than a single day, allowing the governor to choose the timing of an execution. It’s a shift from how the process formerly worked, when the high court set a 24-hour period for executions. If an execution didn’t happen by midnight on that specified date, the execution had to be called off.

The Alabama Attorney General’s Office asked the Alabama Supreme Court in August to set an execution date. The court granted that motion on October 13, and the governor’s office announced the timing on Wednesday.

Court records show that McWhorter, who was 18 at the time of the slaying, formed a plan to kill Williams along with two other teens — one who was Williams’ son, Edward Lee Williams Jr.

The teens planned to rob and shoot Williams at his home.

Edward Lee Williams Jr. was 15 years old at the time.

On the night of the slaying, court records state McWhorter and a 16-year-old co-defendant entered Williams house while he wasn’t home. They were there for hours, ransacking the house and making silencers for the two rifles they found inside. When Williams finally returned home, the teens struggled with him over the guns, before shooting Williams “at least 11 times,” records show.

McWhorter and his co-defendant stole the victim’s wallet and left in his truck, meeting another teenager and the victim’s son. After the teens met up, they divided the money and items taken from the house and separated.

According to a filing in the U.S. Supreme Court from the Alabama Attorney General’s Office, one of the teens “almost immediately went to the police and reported the crime.”

The nation’s highest court declined to review the case in 2021.

Court records show two co-defendants took plea deals in the case. Edward Lee Williams Jr. is currently serving life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The Alabama Supreme Court also has a pending request by the Alabama Attorney General’s Office to execute Death Row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith by another method - nitrogen hypoxia. That method has never been used before in any other state. Smith’s attorneys have argued, among other things, he doesn’t want to be a “test subject.”

Alabama had failed in 2022 to execute Smith by lethal injection after prison workers were unable to start an intravenous connection before the execution warrant expired at midnight.

Source: al.com, Ivana Hrynkiw, October 18 2023

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