Alabama Carries Out Lethal Injection After Supreme Court Denies Emergency Stay

Alabama carried out its second execution of the year on Thursday evening, putting Jeffery Lee to death by lethal injection for a 1998 double murder at a small-town pawnshop after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to halt the proceedings.

Lee, 49, was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m. at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, state authorities said. The execution was the 27th carried out in the United States this year and Alabama's second of 2026.

The Supreme Court denied his stay request earlier in the day, turning it back without comment roughly six hours before the scheduled injection. Gov. Kay Ivey had already declined to grant clemency, and a final push by Lee's attorneys to stop the state from switching execution methods failed in the courts.

A 1998 Robbery That Left Two Dead

Lee was convicted in 2000 of capital murder and attempted murder for the Dec. 12, 1998, robbery at Jimmy's Pawn Shop in Orrville, a small town about 65 miles west of Montgomery.

Witnesses said Lee walked in and asked to see wedding rings, telling the clerk he would come back after getting money from his grandmother. He returned a short time later with a sawed-off shotgun and opened fire.

Jimmy Ellis, the shop's owner, and Elaine Thompson, an employee, were killed. Ellis had built a following as an Elvis Presley impersonator who performed behind a mask under the name "Orion," and his story was the subject of a 2015 documentary. A third employee survived by dropping to the floor and pretending to be dead, then calling 911 after Lee left the store.

The Nitrogen Ruling and a Swift Method Switch

Lee's path to Thursday's lethal injection was not a straight line. Alabama had scheduled him to die by nitrogen gas in June, a method the state began using in 2024. That execution was halted when a federal judge ruled the nitrogen protocol violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The attorney general's office immediately filed paperwork to set a new date using lethal injection, which remains Alabama's primary execution method. Nitrogen has now been used in seven executions in Alabama and one in Louisiana.

Lee's lawyers argued the state was bound to keep its word. In 2018, Lee dropped his own challenge to Alabama's lethal injection process after the state agreed that any execution would be carried out with nitrogen. His attorneys said Alabama should either revise its nitrogen protocol to satisfy the courts or use a firing squad.

The state rejected that argument. Asking the Supreme Court to let the execution proceed, the attorney general's office wrote that nothing precludes a switch to lethal injection, and that further delay carries its own cost. "An unpunished murder is an intrinsic and ongoing harm to those interests and to the rule of law," the office argued. "Nearly twenty-eight years is decades too long."

A Jury Voted for Life; a Judge Imposed Death

Clemency supporters built their case on a sentencing decision made more than two decades ago. Jurors voted 7-5 to sentence Lee to life in prison rather than death, and the trial judge overrode that recommendation and imposed a death sentence.

Alabama abolished judicial override in 2017, ending the practice of letting judges replace a jury's sentencing verdict in capital cases. The change was not retroactive, so Lee's death sentence stood. Supporters rallied outside the Alabama Capitol on Tuesday under the banner "HONOR THE JURY," pressing the governor to commute the sentence before the state could carry it out.

Questions about how juries resolve murder cases have surfaced in other states as well, including a recent Massachusetts prosecution that ended in a deadlocked jury. Lee's defenders pointed to the 7-5 vote as evidence that a life sentence, not death, reflected the judgment of the community that tried him.

What Comes Next for Alabama's Death Chamber

The June ruling that blocked the nitrogen protocol took one method off the table while leaving lethal injection untouched. That outcome could push Alabama and other states to lean more heavily on the older protocol, even as drug supplies and litigation remain unpredictable.

Attorneys on both sides are watching for an appeal of that ruling, which would settle how far states can go in substituting one execution method for another once a scheduled date is disrupted. Lee had spent nearly three decades on death row and said he found religious faith during that time.

For now, Alabama has answered the question in his case. After a judge's decision spared him the gas chamber in June, a lethal injection on Thursday night closed a case that had been open since 1998.