19 July 2024 :
July 18, 2024 - Alabama. Keith Edmund Gavin, 64, Black, was executed
Gavin was sentenced to death for the March 6, 1998 murder of William Clayton Jr. in Cherokee County. Clayton, 64, was gunned down near an ATM while getting cash to take his wife on a date that evening. Gavin committed the fatal shooting while on parole for another murder in Illinois.
Gavin was executed by lethal injection on Thursday evening. His time of death was 6:32 p.m.
The curtains to the three viewing rooms opened 6:09 p.m.
When the curtain opened, Gavin was in the execution chamber and strapped onto the gurney in a standard white sheet. His imam, dressed in a black robe, was speaking and Gavin’s lips were moving. Their conversation couldn’t be heard in the viewing rooms.
At 6:11 p.m., Holman warden Terry Raybon read the state’s death warrant as Gavin’s lips continue to move.
When the warden offered him the microphone to say his last words, Gavin said, “I love my family.” He then followed that statement with several words in Arabic.
His lips continued to move as he stretched both hands against the straps on the gurney with his index fingers pointed upward.
Gavin then leaned his head back and closed his eyes. His mouth fell slightly open as his imam appeared to continue speaking or in prayer. Shortly after, the imam stepped back from the gurney.
At 6:19 p.m., a corrections officer performed a standard consciousness check by yelling Gavin’s name, brushing his eyelid, and pinching his left arm. The check is intended to make sure an inmate is unconscious from the first drug before administering the two other drugs that stop the heart and lungs.
At 6:20 p.m.., Gavin appeared to take his last breath. The curtains closed at 6:25 p.m.. His time of death was 6:32 p.m.
Alabama’s lethal injection protocol requires two intravenous lines for the three-drug lethal injection cocktail. Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said the execution team stuck Gavin three times for the required two IV lines.
Gavin becomes the 3rd person executed this year in Alabama, the he 75th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1983, the 10th prisoner executed in the U.S. this year, and the 1,592nd overall since the country resumed executions in 1977.
In recent days the state of Alabama had granted a request by Gavin who, as a practicing Muslim, wanted his body not to be autopsied, which, albeit summarily, is ordered for all executed persons.
https://www.al.com/news/2024/07/alabama-set-to-execute-64-year-old-keith-edmund-gavin-for-1998-murder-at-atm-updates.html
https://www.apr.org/news/2024-07-13/civil-rights-group-welcomes-alabamas-decision-on-a-muslim-death-row-inmate
