On a Thursday evening in September, Alabama carried out the execution of Jeffery Lee by lethal injection, closing nearly three decades of legal proceedings that began with two deaths in a pawnshop robbery. The Supreme Court's quiet rejection of his final petition — a request to die by nitrogen gas rather than injection — was the last in a long series of doors that closed on him. What lingers is not only the fact of the execution, but the distance between the jury's recommendation of life and the state's decision to end it — a distance that speaks to one of the deepest unresolved tensions in Am
Alabama Executes Inmate Via Lethal Injection After Supreme Court Blocks Nitrogen Gas Method
Jeffery Lee was executed; two victims were killed in the 1998 pawnshop robbery that led to his conviction.