Alabama Executions

Death row inmates in five separate states are set to be put to death in the span of one week. If carried out as planned, the executions in Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas will mark the first time in more than 20 years that five executions were held in seven days.

The state of Alabama is asking a judge to deny defense lawyers’ request to film the next execution by nitrogen gas in an attempt to help courts evaluate whether the new method is humane. The request to record the scheduled Sept. 26 execution of Alan Miller was filed by attorneys for another man facing the death penalty, Carey Dale Grayson.

Lawyers for an Alabama inmate, scheduled to be executed with nitrogen gas this fall, argued in a court filing that the state has ignored problems with the method as it seeks to carry out more nitrogen executions.

Alabama’s attorney general says another nitrogen gas execution will go forward in September. The state on Monday reached a settlement agreement to end litigation filed by death row inmate Alan Miller who is slated to be the second person put to death with nitrogen gas.

Court filings are providing new details of what happened in the nation's first execution using nitrogen gas. Kenneth Smith was executed in Alabama on Jan. 25. A corrections officer said in a sworn statement that Smith had normal blood oxygen levels for longer than he expected.

A man convicted of fatally shooting a delivery driver during a robbery attempt in 1998 was executed by chemical injection Thursday evening in Alabama. Keith Edmund Gavin, 64, was pronounced dead at 6:32 p.m. at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in southwest Alabama, authorities said.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, is urging Alabama authorities to accept a request from a Muslim inmate that no autopsy be performed on his body after execution, in accordance with his religious beliefs.

Alabama has asked the state Supreme Court to authorize another execution using nitrogen gas. The request comes months after the state became the first to put a person to death with the previously untested method.

Alabama has set a July 18 execution date for a man convicted in the 1998 shooting death of a delivery driver who had stopped at an ATM. The state's governor announced the lethal injection date Thursday for 64-year-old Keith Edmund Gavin.

An Alabama inmate seeking to block the state's plans to make him the second person to be put to death with nitrogen gas has filed a lawsuit arguing the state “botched” the first execution using the new method.