Alabama set to execute man for fatal shooting of a delivery driver during a 1998 robbery attempt
A man convicted of killing a delivery driver who stopped for cash at an ATM to take his wife to dinner is facing scheduled execution Thursday night in Alabama.
A man convicted of killing a delivery driver who stopped for cash at an ATM to take his wife to dinner is facing scheduled execution Thursday night in Alabama.
Keith Edmund Gavin, 64, is set to receive a lethal injection at a prison in southwest Alabama. He was convicted of capital murder in the shooting death of William Clayton Jr. in Cherokee County.
Alabama last week agreed in Gavin’s case to forgo a post-execution autopsy, which is typically performed on executed inmates in the state. Gavin, who is Muslim, said the procedure would violate his religious beliefs. Gavin had filed a lawsuit seeking to stop plans for an autopsy, and the state settled the complaint.
Keith Edmund Gavin. Alabama Department of Corrections via AP / APClayton, a courier service driver, had driven to an ATM in downtown Centre on the evening of March 6, 1998. He had just finished work and was getting money to take his wife to dinner, according to a court summary of trial testimony. Prosecutors said Gavin shot Clayton during an attempted robbery, pushed him in to the passenger’s seat of the van Clayton was driving and drove off in the vehicle. A law enforcement officer testified that he began pursuing the van and the driver — a man he later identified as Gavin — shot at him before fleeing on foot into the woods.
At the time, Gavin was on parole in Illinois after serving 17 years of a 34-year sentence for murder, according to court records.
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