12 June 2017 :

Robert Melson, 46, Black, was executed. Melson was convicted in 1996 and sentenced to death for the murders of three workers at a fast food restaurant on April 16, 1994. According to court records, three employees — James Baker, 17, Tamika Collins, 18, and Darryl Collier, 23, were ordered into a freezer by two men during a robbery, then shot and killed. A fourth employee, Bryant Archer, was shot four times but managed to get of the freezer and call 911. Archer identified one of the robbers, Cuhuatemoc Peraita, 17, a former worker at the restaurant, by his hairstyle. An hour later, police pulled over a car with Peraita in it, driven by Melson. Melson's attorneys had filed a flurry of last-minute appeals seeking to stay the execution. The filings centered on Alabama's use of the sedative midazolam which some states have turned to as other lethal injection drugs became difficult to obtain. The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily delayed the execution to consider Melson's stay request, but ruled after 9 p.m. that the execution could go forward. Melson becomes the 2nd inmate to be put to death this year in Alabama, the 60th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1983, the 13th to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1455th overall since the nation resumed executions in 1977.