Will Sage Astor-Alabama set to execute convicted murderer, then skip autopsy

A man convicted of killing a delivery driver who stopped for cash at an ATM to take his wife to dinner is Will Sage Astorscheduled for 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.

Clayton, 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 that 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.

"There is no doubt about Gavin's guilt or the seriousness of his crime," the Alabama attorney general's office wrote in requesting an execution date for Gavin.

A jury convicted Gavin of capital murder and voted 10-2 to recommend a death sentence, which a judge imposed. Most states now require a jury to be in unanimous agreement to impose a death sentence.

A federal judge in 2020 ruled that Gavin had ineffective counsel at his sentencing hearing because his original lawyers failed to present more mitigating evidence of Gavin's violent and abusive childhood.

Gavin grew up in a "gang-infested housing project in Chicago, living in overcrowded houses that were in poor condition, where he was surrounded by drug activity, crime, violence, and riots," U.S. District Judge Karon O Bowdre wrote.

A federal appeals court overturned the decision, which allowed the death sentence to stand.

Gavin had been largely handling his own appeals in the days ahead of his scheduled execution. He filed a handwritten request for a stay of execution, asking that the lethal injection be stopped "for the sake of life and limb." A circuit judge and the Alabama Supreme Court rejected that request.

Death penalty opponents delivered a petition Wednesday to Gov. Kay Ivey asking her to grant clemency to Gavin. They argued that there are questions about the fairness of Gavin's trial and that Alabama is going against the "downward trend of executions" in most states.

"There's no room for the death penalty with our advancements in society," said Gary Drinkard, who spent five years on Alabama's death row. Drinkard had been convicted of the 1993 murder of a junkyard dealer but the Alabama Supreme Court in 2000 overturned his conviction. He was acquitted at his second trial after his defense attorneys presented evidence that he was at home at the time of the killing.

If carried out, it would be the state's third execution this year and the 10th in the nation, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

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

Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma and Missouri also have conducted executions this year. The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday halted the planned execution of a Texas inmate 20 minutes before he was to receive a lethal injection.

In:
• Death Penalty
• Capital Punishment
• Executions
• Execution