Alabama Death Row inmate denied handwritten appeal to stop his execution

Alabama Death Row inmate Keith Gavin had said in a court filing by his attorneys last month he didn’t plan any more appeals of his scheduled lethal-injection execution Thursday for the 1998 murder of man at a bank ATM in Cherokee County.

But in the past few weeks he has been fighting for his life in a handwritten motion to a judge.

The judge dismissed that request last week, and on Tuesday afternoon Alabama Supreme Court justices issued an order denying Gavin’s appeal that had been filed Monday.

Efforts by AL.com to reach Gavin’s attorneys for comment were unsuccessful Tuesday.

Gavin, 64, was sentenced to death for the March 1998 murder of William Clayton Jr. in Cherokee County. He is set to be executed July 18, but the timeframe could go into July 19 if there are delays. He is set to die by lethal injection at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, which is the only prison in the state with an execution chamber and where most death row inmates are housed.

Gavin’s attorneys on June 14 had filed a lawsuit asking that the state not perform an autopsy on his body, saying that Gavin is a devout Muslim and that his “religion teaches that the human body is a sacred temple, which must be kept whole.”

Alabama officials agreed not to conduct an autopsy, and the lawsuit was formally dismissed.

In that lawsuit, his attorneys stated that Gavin “does not anticipate any further appeals or requests for stays of his execution” and the autopsy argument is not an effort to block the execution.

But on June 17, Gavin filed a “Stay of Execution” motion without his attorneys to the Cherokee County Circuit Court. At the same time he also asked the court for an “In Forma Pauperis” declaration – a status that allows poor people to have court filing fees waived.

Cherokee County Circuit Court Judge Shaunathan C. Bell on July 10 ruled that Gavin had more than enough in his prison account to pay the filing fee and denied the request. The judge also dismissed Gavin’s motion for relief from his conviction and death sentence.

In his motion last week, Gavin had argued a jurisdictional issue and that jurors in his trial should not have been told about his previous conviction and sentence served for murder in Illinois.

In Gavin’s case, court records show he was on parole from Illinois when he was arrested in the shooting death of Clayton, a courier service driver who had parked his van to use an ATM machine in downtown Centre. He was finished with deliveries for the day and was stopping at Regions Bank to get money to take his wife to dinner.

Records stated that Gavin shot Clayton during an attempted robbery, pushed him into the passenger’s seat, and drove off in the van. With an investigator from the district attorney’s office in close pursuit, Gavin stopped the van, got out, shot at the investigator, and fled.

Gavin was soon apprehended, and Clayton was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Two eyewitnesses identified Gavin as the shooter, including his cousin, who was an employee of the Illinois Department of Corrections. The cousin testified about trips he and Gavin had made to Centre and on that day saw Gavin fire shots at the driver of the van. Gavin also fired shots at an investigator as he fled, according to testimony.

The slaying came just a few months after Gavin had been released on parole from prison in Illinois after serving 17 years of a 34-year sentence for murder.

Source: al.com, Kent Faulk, July 16, 2024

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