Alabama executes man convicted of killing delivery driver during a 1998 robbery attempt

ATMORE, Ala. (AP) — A man convicted of fatally shooting a delivery driver during a robbery attempt in 1998 was executed by chemical injection Thursday evening in Alabama.

Keith Edmund Gavin, 64, was pronounced dead at 6:32 p.m. at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in southwest Alabama, authorities said. He was convicted of capital murder in the shooting death of courier service driver William Clayton Jr., 68, in Cherokee County on March 6, 1998. Clayton had just finished work and was getting money at an ATM to take his wife to dinner, according to a court summary of trial testimony.

“After receiving a death sentence, Mr. Gavin appealed time after time for years to avoid justice, but failed at every attempt. Today, that justice was finally delivered for Mr. Clayton’s loved ones,” Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement. “I offer my prayers for Mr. Clayton’s family and friends who still mourn his loss all these years later.”

The execution began shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court turned down Gavin’s request for a stay of execution, which he had filed himself in a handwritten document.

“I love my family,” Gavin said in his final statement at about 6:10 p.m., which appeared to be followed by a few words that were not audible. Gavin, who is Muslim, appeared to move his lips in prayer as his spiritual adviser stood beside the gurney. He had a finger lifted on both hands in what appeared to be the Islamic gesture meaning Allah is the only god.

As a sedative began flowing through the IV line, his head, which had been lifted, fell back on the gurney, and Gavin appeared to lose consciousness. At about 6:20, a corrections officer performed a consciousness check — saying his name, brushing his eyelids and pinching his arms — which is done before the final two drugs are administered. Soon afterward, his breathing faded.

Prosecutors said Gavin shot Clayton during the attempted robbery, pushed him into the passenger seat of the van he was driving and drove off in the vehicle. A law enforcement officer testified that he began pursuing the van and the driver — a man he later identified as Gavin — shot at him before running away into the woods.

At the time of the killing, Gavin was on parole in Illinois after serving 17 years of a 34-year sentence for murder, according to court records.

Clayton was retired from a job at a railroad company and was a Korean War veteran, according to a 1998 obituary published by The Birmingham News. The father of seven was still working to help provide for his family, his son said.

Matthew Clayton, who witnessed the execution, said afterward that his father was a “slice of Americana,” sometimes working two jobs to support his family.

“He was a good man. He left behind children and a wife who miss him, an extended family that mourns his loss. It’s quite unfortunate that his final years were taken from him in such a brutal way,” the younger Clayton said, adding this father “did not deserve to die this way.”

The younger Clayton questioned how Gavin was able to be free and in Alabama after his murder conviction in Illinois.

Alabama agreed last week in Gavin’s case to forgo a post-execution autopsy, which is typically performed on executed people who are incarcerated in the state. Gavin said the procedure would violate his religious beliefs. He had filed a lawsuit seeking to stop plans for an autopsy, and the state settled the complaint.

A jury convicted Gavin of capital murder and voted 10-2 to recommend a death sentence, which a judge imposed. Most states now require a jury to be in unanimous agreement to impose a death sentence.

A federal judge ruled in 2020 that Gavin had ineffective counsel at his sentencing hearing because his original lawyers failed to present more mitigating evidence of Gavin’s violent and abusive childhood in Chicago.

Gavin grew up in a “gang-infested housing project in Chicago, living in overcrowded houses that were in poor condition, where he was surrounded by drug activity, crime, violence, and riots,” U.S. District Judge Karon O. Bowdre wrote.

A federal appeals court overturned the decision, which allowed the death sentence to stand.

“There is no doubt about Gavin’s guilt for this heinous offense,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Thursday.

Gavin’s execution was the 10th in the U.S. this year and the third in Alabama, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma and Missouri also have conducted executions this year. The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit takes no position on capital punishment but has criticized the way states carry out executions.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked the state of Texas from executing an inmate 20 minutes before he was scheduled to receive a lethal injection.