- Keith Edmund Gavin, who was sentenced to death for the 1998 shooting death of courier driver William Clayton Jr., will be executed by chemical injection on July 18, 2024.
- At the time of Clayton’s murder, Gavin was on parole in Illinois after serving 17 years of a 34-year sentence for an unrelated murder conviction, according to court records.
- In 2020, a federal judge ruled that Gavin’s original attorney was ineffective at his sentencing hearing because he failed to present more extenuating evidence about his violent and abusive childhood in Chicago. The ruling was later overturned.
A man convicted of shooting and killing a delivery driver during an attempted robbery in 1998 was executed by chemical injection in Alabama on Thursday evening.
Keith Edmund Gavin, 64, was pronounced dead at 6:32 p.m. at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in southwest Alabama, authorities said. Gavin was convicted of shooting and killing delivery driver William Clayton Jr., 68, in Cherokee County on March 6, 1998. Clayton had just finished work and was withdrawing money from an ATM to take his wife out to dinner, according to a court summary of trial testimony.
“After receiving his death sentence, Gavin appealed multiple times for years in an attempt to avoid justice, but all attempts were unsuccessful. Today, justice has finally been served to Mr. Clayton’s loved ones,” Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement. “My prayers go out to Mr. Clayton’s family and friends, who are still mourning his loss all these years later.”
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The execution began shortly after the US Supreme Court rejected Gavin’s handwritten request for a stay of execution.
“I love my family,” Gavin said in his final statement at about 6:10 p.m., followed by several inaudible words. Gavin, who is Muslim, moved his lips as if in prayer as a spiritual leader stood next to his stretcher, and held up the fingers of both hands in an apparent Islamic gesture signifying Allah is the only God.
As the sedative began to flow through the IV line, Gavin’s head, which had been elevated, collapsed onto the gurney and he appeared to lose consciousness. At about 6:20 pm, a prison officer checked Gavin to see if he was awake – calling his name, stroking his eyelids and pinching his arm – before administering the final two drugs. Soon after, Gavin’s breathing weakened.
The state of Alabama has agreed to waive an autopsy for Muslim death row inmate Keith Edmund Gavin (pictured), who is scheduled to be executed on July 18, 2024. (Alabama Department of Corrections, via The Associated Press, File)
Prosecutors said Gavin shot Clayton during the attempted robbery, forced him into the passenger seat of the van he was driving and fled in the vehicle. Police testified that Gavin began pursuing the van, and the driver, later identified as Gavin, fired shots at the suspect and fled into the woods.
At the time of the murder, Gavin was on parole in Illinois after serving 17 years of a 34-year sentence for murder, according to court records.
Mr. Clayton was a retired railroad employee and Korean War veteran, according to his Birmingham News obituary published in 1998. He was the father of seven children and continued to work to provide for his family, his son said.
Matthew Clayton, who witnessed the execution, later said his father was a “quintessential American” who sometimes worked two jobs to support his family.
“My father was a good man and will be missed by his children and wife and mourned by his extended family. It is truly unfortunate that his final years were taken from him in such a cruel way,” Mr Clayton said, adding that his father “did not deserve to die like this”.
Clayton questioned how Gavin was able to be free and in Alabama after being convicted of murder in Illinois.
The state of Alabama agreed last week not to conduct an autopsy after Gavin’s execution, as is typically done for death row inmates in the state. Gavin argued an autopsy would violate his religious beliefs. He sued to block plans for an autopsy, and the state settled the case.
The jury found Gavin guilty of murder and recommended the death penalty by a vote of 10 to 2, which the judge imposed. Most states now require a unanimous jury to impose the death penalty.
A federal judge ruled in 2020 that Gavin’s defense attorneys were ineffective at his sentencing hearing because they failed to present more extenuating evidence about his violent and abusive childhood in Chicago.
Gavin “grew up in Chicago’s gang-infested housing complexes, lived in squalid, overcrowded housing and was surrounded by drug trafficking, crime, violence and riots,” U.S. District Judge Karon O. Bouder wrote.
A federal appeals court overturned the verdict and upheld the death sentence.
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“There is no doubt about Gavin’s guilt for this heinous crime,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Thursday.
Gavin’s execution is the 10th in the US this year and the third in Alabama, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma and Missouri have also carried out executions this year. The Washington, DC-based nonprofit does not take a position on the death penalty but has criticized the way states carry out executions.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked Texas from carrying out executions on death row inmates 20 minutes before they were scheduled to receive lethal injections.
