Jeffery Lee, the Alabama man convicted of killing a well-known Elvis Presley impersonator, is due to be executed by lethal injection after a judge blocked the state’s original plan to use nitrogen gas.
Lee, 49, is scheduled to receive the injection from 6pm at William C Holman Correctional Facility in south Alabama. He was convicted of killing two people during a 1998 pawn shop robbery in rural Dallas County.
His initial execution date was cancelled after District Judge Emily Marks ruled that Alabama’s nitrogen-gas protocol was unconstitutionally cruel and breached his rights under the Eighth Amendment. Her order prevented the state from executing Lee using that method.
Alabama’s attorney general’s office then sought a new execution date using lethal injection, the state’s primary method of execution.
Challenge over change of execution method
Lee’s lawyers have asked the US Supreme Court to halt the execution, arguing that Alabama should not be allowed to change the method after previously agreeing to use nitrogen hypoxia.
Lee had challenged Alabama’s lethal-injection protocol in 2016. After nitrogen was authorised as an alternative, he selected it as his preferred method and agreed to drop the lawsuit in 2018 after the state agreed that, if he were executed, it would use nitrogen hypoxia.
His lawyers say that agreement prevents the state from using lethal injection. They have argued that Alabama should instead revise its nitrogen protocol or use a firing squad.
“The petition asks this Court to determine whether the State may execute Mr. Lee by lethal injection notwithstanding its prior representation that it would execute him by nitrogen hypoxia,” one of his attorneys wrote.
The attorney general’s office has urged the Supreme Court to allow the execution to proceed, arguing that nothing prevents the state from switching methods. Lawyers for the office wrote that “an unpunished murder is an intrinsic and ongoing harm to those interests and to the rule of law. Nearly twenty-eight years is decades too long.”
Jury recommended life imprisonment
Lee’s supporters have also pointed to the jury’s recommendation in his case. The panel voted 7-5 for life without parole, but the trial judge overrode that decision and sentenced him to death.
Alabama abolished judicial override in capital cases in 2017, but the change was not retrospective. Lee is among about two dozen people on the state’s death row who were sentenced to death despite juries recommending life sentences.
Supporters held a rally outside the Alabama Capitol on Tuesday under the banner “HONOR THE JURY”.
The killings took place on 12 December 1998 at Jimmy’s Pawn Shop in Orrville, a small town west of Selma. The owner, Jimmy Ellis, and employee Elaine Thompson were shot dead, while another employee survived after pretending to be dead.
The surviving witness told the trial that Lee entered the shop, asked to see wedding rings and said he would return after collecting money from his grandmother. He came back with a sawn-off shotgun and shot the three people inside, the witness said.
Ellis was a singer whose voice resembled Elvis Presley’s. He later gained a national following as the masked Elvis impersonator Orion and was the subject of a 2015 documentary.
Lee was convicted of capital murder and attempted murder in 2000.
Alabama began using nitrogen gas for some executions in 2024, replacing breathable air with the gas through a respirator mask and causing death through lack of oxygen. The method has since been used in seven executions in Alabama and one in Louisiana, drawing criticism from people who say it is poorly understood and may cause unnecessary suffering.
