Keith Edmund Gavin, a man convicted of killing a delivery driver in Alabama in 1998, is facing scheduled execution on Thursday night. Gavin was found guilty of shooting William Clayton Jr. during an attempted robbery as Clayton was getting cash to take his wife to dinner. Gavin, who is a Muslim, successfully sued to forgo a post-execution autopsy, as it violated his religious beliefs.
Gavin, who had a history of violence and had been on parole in Illinois at the time of the murder, was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death by a vote of 10-2 from the jury. Despite claims of a difficult upbringing in a violent environment in Chicago, his death sentence was upheld after an appeals court overturned a ruling about his poor legal representation. Gavin had been managing his own appeals and had requested a stay of execution, which was denied by the courts.
Death penalty opponents have petitioned Governor Kay Ivey to grant Gavin clemency, citing concerns about the fairness of his trial and the decreasing use of the death penalty across the country. If carried out, Gavin’s execution would be the third in Alabama this year and the 10th in the nation. The U.S. Supreme Court recently halted the execution of a Texas inmate just minutes before he was scheduled to receive a lethal injection.
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