A man convicted of fatally shooting a delivery driver in 1998 was executed Thursday evening in Alabama. Keith Edmund Gavin, 64, was pronounced dead at 6:32 p.m. CDT after a lethal injection at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility.
He was convicted of capital murder for the death of William Clayton Jr., a 68-year-old courier driver, in Cherokee County. Clayton had gone to an ATM in downtown Centre on March 6, 1998, after finishing work to get money for dinner with his wife.
“After receiving a death sentence, Mr. Gavin appealed multiple times to avoid justice but failed. Today, justice was finally delivered for Mr. Clayton’s loved ones. I offer my prayers for Mr. Clayton’s family and friends who still mourn his loss all these years later,” said Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey.
The execution proceeded after the U.S. Supreme Court denied Gavin’s request for a stay of execution. In his final statement at 6:11 p.m., Gavin expressed love for his family and spoke a few words in Arabic. As a sedative was administered, he appeared to lose consciousness, and after a consciousness check at 6:19 p.m., his breathing slowed until he died.
Prosecutors said Gavin shot Clayton during an attempted robbery, pushed him into the passenger seat of his van, and drove off. A law enforcement officer testified that Gavin, while being pursued, shot at him before fleeing into the woods. At the time, Gavin was on parole in Illinois after serving 17 years of a 34-year sentence for murder.
Clayton was a retired railroad worker and Korean War veteran, still working to support his family. His son, Matthew Clayton, described him as a hardworking man who did not deserve to die brutally. Matthew questioned how Gavin, a convicted murderer, was free in Alabama.
Alabama agreed not to perform a post-execution autopsy on Gavin, honoring his religious beliefs as a Muslim. Gavin had sued to stop the autopsy, and the state settled the complaint.
Gavin was sentenced to death by a jury vote of 10-2, a practice no longer allowed in most states. In 2020, a federal judge ruled that Gavin had ineffective counsel during his sentencing, citing his abusive childhood, but a federal appeals court upheld the death sentence.
“There is no doubt about Gavin’s guilt for this heinous offense,” said Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall.
This execution was the 10th in the U.S. this year and the third in Alabama. Other states conducting executions this year include Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Missouri. The Supreme Court recently blocked a Texas execution minutes before it was scheduled.