The State of Alabama executed its third person in 2024 on Thursday evening.
Keith Edmund Gavin, 64, was put to death by lethal injection for the 1998 killing of William Clayton Jr. Gavin was pronounced dead at 6:32 p.m. The lethal injection procedure took 23 minutes and media witnesses reported no unusual circumstances with the process.
“Today … justice was finally delivered for Mr. Clayton’s loved ones,” Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement released following the execution. “I offer my prayers for Mr. Clayton’s family and friends who still mourn his loss all these years later.”
Gavin was convicted of killing Clayton, a courier in Cherokee County, after Clayton stopped on his way home from work to retrieve cash from an ATM. Gavin shot Clayton as he sat inside his delivery van outside of the Regions Bank in Centre.
Gavin also was convicted of an earlier murder in Illinois. He served 17 years of a 34-year sentence for that 1982 murder before receiving parole and eventually moving to Alabama.
In appeals filings for the Clayton murder, Gavin argued that his trial counsel was ineffective, and specifically that his attorney failed to present evidence or call witnesses that would have established that Gavin was abused as a child. Such testimony, he argued, could have led to a less severe punishment for his crimes.
He lost every appeal.
