State Sen. Robert Stewart (D-Selma) joined anti-death penalty advocates who met in Montgomery on Monday to plead with Gov. Kay Ivey to offer amnesty to Jeffrey James Lee, 49, who is scheduled for execution on Thursday for the 1998 murder of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson in an attempted robbery.
Representatives of Death Penalty Action and Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty joined Stewart in Montgomery to offer remarks, deliver a petition with collected signatures to Ivey’s office and to ring the so-called Delaware Bell.
“The Delaware Bell was tolled in protest of 18 executions in Delaware before that state abolished its death penalty,” the organization said. “Entrusted to Death Penalty Action, it now travels the country as a symbol of the growing ‘For Whom the Bells Toll’ campaign, which encourages faith communities to pray for those touched by executions. Since September 2024, the Delaware Bell has tolled outside statehouses and prisons during execution actions across 11 states, including Alabama, as well as outside the U.S. Supreme Court.”
On Dec. 12, 1998, around noon, Lee entered Jimmy's Pawnshop in the town of Orrville in Dallas County, armed with a sawed-off shotgun. Immediately upon entering the store, he shot Jimmy Ellis. After shooting Ellis, he shot Thompson in the face. Continuing his shooting, he shot another person, Helen King, and shot Ellis again. Thompson and Ellis died as a result of the shotgun blasts.
King survived the shooting after lying motionless on the floor pretending to be dead. Lee unsuccessfully attempted to take the cash register from the store and escaped with two others. A surveillance video captured the murders, and he later confessed after being captured in a Georgia motel.
The jury recommended Lee be sentenced to life in prison. However, the court overruled the recommendation, sentencing him to death and doling out an additional life sentence for the attempted murder of King.
Lee's attorneys have attempted to stay his execution, saying the process that involves replacing breathed oxygen with nitrogen, causing the subject to lose consciousness and die, violates the constitutional provisions against cruel and unusual punishment. However, similar attempts have been made to no avail in the method's seven previous uses in the state.
Other anti-death penalty advocacy groups have also claimed it to be immoral to execute Lee, citing his childhood trauma, early substance abuse and a traumatic brain injury.
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