ATMORE — Alabama executed Jeffery Lee by lethal injection Thursday evening for the 1998 killings of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson during a pawn shop robbery in Orrville, in Dallas County.
Lee, 49, had spent 26 years on death row. Gov. Kay Ivey declined to grant clemency despite a petition signed by roughly 8,000 people asking that his sentence be commuted to life in prison.
The case drew attention because Lee was sentenced under judicial override, a practice Alabama has since abolished, and because a judge’s ruling earlier this year blocked the state from executing him with nitrogen gas, leaving lethal injection as the method.
Source: WVTM 13
Opelika Daily News — Friday Report, Sept. 18, 2026 | Compiled by Viktor AI for Opelika Daily News
