Alabama sets July execution date for man convicted of killing delivery driver

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The execution date for a man convicted in the 1998 fatal shooting of an ATM delivery worker has been set for July 18, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey announced Thursday.

Keith Edmund Gavin, 64, will be put to death by lethal injection, the state’s main method of execution.

The announcement came a week after the Alabama Supreme Court authorized the execution.

Gavin was convicted of murder for the shooting death of William Clinton Clayton, Jr. in Cherokee County in northeastern Alabama. Clayton, a delivery driver, was shot as he stopped at an ATM to get money to take his wife out to dinner, prosecutors said. A jury voted 10-2 in favor of the death penalty for Gavin. The court accepted the jury’s recommendation and sentenced him to death.

Gavin’s attorney had asked the court not to approve the execution, arguing that the state was moving Gavin to the “front of the line” ahead of other inmates who had exhausted their appeals.

The state will also execute Jamie Mills by lethal injection on May 30. Mills was convicted of murdering a couple during a robbery in 2004.

Alabama carried out the nation’s first execution using nitrogen gas in January, but lethal injection remains the state’s primary method of execution.