MONTGOMERY, Alabama — Alabama has agreed to waive an autopsy on a Muslim death row inmate who was set to be executed next week, saying the autopsy procedure violate his religious beliefs.
Keith Edmund Gavin had filed a lawsuit against the state seeking to avoid an autopsy, which is typically performed after executions in Alabama. Alabama’s prison system said in a statement Friday that it had agreed to waive the autopsy.
“There will be no autopsy performed on Keith Edmund Gavin. His remains will be collected by the on-site funeral home,” the Alabama Department of Corrections said in an emailed statement.
Gavin, 64, is set to be executed July 18 by lethal injection at a prison in southern Alabama.
Gavin filed a lawsuit last month asking a judge to bar the state from performing an autopsy after his execution. His attorneys did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
“Mr. Gavin is a devout Muslim. His religion teaches that the human body is a sacred temple that must be preserved whole. Therefore, Mr. Gavin sincerely believes that an autopsy would desecrate his body and violate the sanctity of preserving his human body intact. Based on his faith, Mr. Gavin strongly opposes an autopsy being performed on his body after his execution,” his attorneys wrote in the lawsuit filed in Montgomery County Court.
His attorneys said they filed the lawsuit after they were unable to have “meaningful conversations” with state officials about his request to avoid an autopsy. They added that the lawsuit is not an attempt to delay the execution and that “Gavin does not anticipate any further appeals or requests for a stay of his execution.”
William Califf, a spokesman for Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, said earlier this week that “we are working toward a resolution” in the case.
Gavin was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1998 shooting death of William Clinton Clayton Jr. in Cherokee County in northeastern Alabama. Clayton, a delivery driver, had stopped at an ATM to get money for his wife to go to dinner when he was shot, prosecutors said.
A jury voted 10-2 to sentence Gavin to death. The court accepted the jury’s recommendation and sentenced him to death.