Alabama carries out execution of Jeffery Lee for 1998 Dallas County murders
By Riley Conlon
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ALABAMA (WVTM) — Alabama carried out the execution of Jeffery Lee on Thursday evening after Gov. Kay Ivey declined to grant clemency in his case.
Lee was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m. Central Time after Ivey told Corrections Commissioner Greg Lovelace that she would not intervene and directed him to proceed with Lee’s death sentence for the 1998 capital murders of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson.
He had six visitors and declined a final meal request.
“In June, after Mr. Lee attempted to avoid his deserved death sentence, I reaffirmed my commitment that justice would ultimately be served,” said Ivey. “Tonight, that promise was fulfilled for his victims, Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson, as well as for their loved ones who have long-awaited his sentence to be carried out. This case underscores exactly why the law passed in 2017 ending so-called ‘judicial override’ did not apply to existing death sentences like Mr. Lee’s. These victims have waited long enough, and I pray they can feel peace and have closure.”
Lee was convicted of two counts of capital murder in connection with the 1998 Dallas County killings and an attempted murder. His jury recommended life in prison, but a judge overruled that recommendation and imposed the death penalty.
Alabama eliminated judicial override in 2017, but the change did not apply to death sentences in cases decided before the law took effect, including Lee’s.
Lee’s execution had originally been scheduled for June using nitrogen hypoxia. That attempt was halted after a federal judge ruled Alabama’s nitrogen hypoxia protocol violated the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The U.S. Supreme Court later declined Alabama’s request to allow the execution to proceed.
In July, Ivey set a new execution date for September and ordered that Lee be put to death by lethal injection.
Following the execution, Lee’s legal team issued the following statement:
“Tonight, Alabama executed Jeffery Lee by lethal injection, even though his sentencing jury voted to spare his life. His death sentence rested solely on judicial override — an old law that Alabama has repealed. The State itself concluded this practice was wrong enough to abandon yet still put a man to death under it. That is a moral failure, not just a legal formality.
“The execution also broke a promise. In June, after two federal courts found problems with Alabama’s nitrogen hypoxia protocol, the State sought a new warrant within 24 hours. In doing so, it chose to execute Jeffery Lee by lethal injection, an equally problematic method it had told a federal court in 2018 it would not use.
“A state that no longer stands behind the rule that condemned a man, but kills him under it anyway, has not delivered justice. It has revealed how little its own standards constrain it when it is determined to carry out an execution.”
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