Alabama executes Keith Edmund Gavin

Gavin was executed by lethal injection in the shooting death of William Clayton Jr., a married father of 7 described by his son as a gentle giant. It's Alabama's 3rd execution this year.

Alabama executed death row inmate Keith Edmund Gavin on Thursday, more than two decades after he fatally shot a father of seven who had stopped at an ATM to get money for a date night with his wife.

Gavin, 64, was executed by lethal injection at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, becoming the third inmate to be put to death by the state this year and the 10th in the nation. He died at 6:32 p.m., prison officials said.

An Alabama jury found Gavin guilty of murdering William Clinton Clayton Jr., whose youngest son described him as a hard-working "gentle giant" in an interview with USA TODAY this week.

Gavin had maintained his innocence since 1998, pointing the finger at a cousin who who was at the crime scene with him.

Gavin's execution comes just two days after the U.S. Supreme Court halted the Texas execution of Ruben Gutierrez in the 1998 murder of an 85-year-old retired schoolteacher. The high court ruled Tuesday that a lower court must look at Gutierrez's arguments for DNA testing before his execution can be scheduled, if at all.

Keith Edmund Gavin's last meal before death

The day before Gavin's execution, he refused breakfast, lunch and dinner but ate a bag of Ruffles cheddar sour cream potato chips, a bag of Lay’s plain potato chips and a chocolate Hersey Bar with almonds, according to the Alabama Department of Corrections.

Gavin refused his final meal Thursday and did not make any special requests, the corrections department said.

Also Thursday, a spiritual advisor and his attorneys, Neil Conrad and Daniel Epstein, visited Gavin and were among the witnesses to the execution.

William Clinton Clayton Jr.'s murder

On March 6, 1998, Clayton was preparing to take his wife of 38 years out to dinner. The courier van driver stopped to withdraw money from an ATM at Regions Bank in Centre, about 85 miles northeast of Birmingham.

Around the same time, Gavin had driven to the region from Chicago with his cousin, Dewayne Meeks, arriving in downtown Centre just as Clayton went to the ATM, according to court documents obtained by USA TODAY.

While the men were stopped at an intersection near Regions Bank, Meeks testified that Gavin got out of the car, walked up to the driver's side of Clayton's van and fired two shots. Meeks, saying he was scared, then drove off in his car, while Gavin got in Clayton's van − with Clayton still in it and bleeding out − and followed Meeks, court records say.

A police pursuit of the van ensued but ended with Gavin's capture in the woods where police later discovered the murder weapon, a 40-caliber Glock pistol. An officer who heard about the shooting on his radio found Clayton "barely alive" in the van and he was pronounced dead shortly after at a hospital.

Meeks was arrested weeks later in Chicago on a murder charge in the case but prosecutors later dropped it. Gavin's conviction was in part due to Meeks' testimony.

Gavin detailed in several appeals for a new murder trial that Meeks was the one who shot Clayton and not him. Meeks has never been convicted in the crime, and two other witnesses positively identified Gavin as the shooter.

Clayton's youngest son attends Gavin's execution

Matt Joseph Clayton, William Clayton's youngest child, told USA TODAY on Tuesday that he would be attending Gavin's execution to "represent his family" and recognize the efforts of the state officials who "brought Mr. Gavin to justice."

"No one wants to view an execution, so let's be clear about that," he said. "However, I cannot choose to not attend given the work that has been put forth."

Matt Clayton said his mother, who is 94 years old, lives independently and is "very healthy and very vibrant." He did not say if she or his other siblings attended the execution on Thursday.

He called his father a "gentle giant" who worked hard to help provide for him and his six siblings.

"I don't think anyone anticipated that his life would end this way," said Matt Clayton, who was 28 when his father was gunned down. "Certainly not his family … It was quite shocking."

Keith Edmund Gavin's body will not be autopsied

Gavin's attorneys filed a lawsuit this month requesting that the state not perform an autopsy on his body following the execution because of his Islamic faith.

“His religion teaches that the human body is a sacred temple, which must be kept whole," the lawsuit says. "Mr. Gavin sincerely believes that an autopsy would desecrate his body and violate the sanctity of keeping his human body intact."

Alabama agreed to forgo the autopsy, the Montgomery Advertiser reported.

"In Islamic beliefs, autopsies are generally viewed as impermissible mutilation of the deceased but are permissible in cases of necessity and only to the extent required," the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a news release.

Gavin becomes the 3rd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Alabama and the 75th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on April 22, 1983. Only Texas (588), Oklahoma (125), Virginia (115), Florida (105), Missouri (99), and Georgia (77), have carried out more executions in the modern era since the US Supreme Court’s decision in Gregg v. Georgia on July 2, 1976.

Gavin becomes the 10th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1,592nd overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977, when Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in the Utah State Penitentiary.

Source: USA Today, Jonathan Limehouse; Rick Halperin, July 18, 2024

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