Alabama Executes Jeffrey Lee for 1998 Pawnshop Murders

On a Thursday in September 2026, the Alabama Department of Corrections carried out a lethal-injection execution at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. Jeffrey Lee, 49, was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m. after a judge’s earlier ruling blocked the state’s use of nitrogen gas as the method of execution. Lee had been scheduled for a nitrogen-gas execution on June 11, but the plan was halted when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to lift the injunction. The following day, June 12, the attorney general’s office filed paperwork to set a new lethal-injection date, which was ultimately used.

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Lee was convicted in 2000 of capital murder and attempted murder for a robbery at Jimmy’s Pawn Shop in Orrville, a small town west of Montgomery, in December 1998. Two people—store owner Jimmy Ellis and employee Elaine Thompson—were shot and killed; a third employee survived by playing dead. At trial, a jury voted 7-5 for a life-sentence, but a judge exercised a now-repealed “judicial override” to impose death. Alabama abolished judicial override in 2017, but the change was not applied retroactively to existing death sentences.

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Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said “justice was finally served.” Governor Kay Ivey issued a statement that the execution fulfilled a promise to the victims and their families. The U.S. Supreme Court denied Lee’s request for a stay of execution without comment, allowing the lethal-injection protocol to proceed.

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• “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.” — Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey

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*Data*: This execution was Alabama’s second lethal-injection this year and the 27th execution nationwide in 2026. Since 2024, Alabama has used nitrogen gas in seven executions, with one additional execution in Louisiana.

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