ATMORE, Ala. — Jeffery Lee was executed by lethal injection at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility on Thursday night for the 1998 murders of two people at an Orrville pawn shop.
Attorney General Steve Marshall cleared the execution to commence at 6:08 p.m. Lee’s time of death was 6:22 p.m.
The Attorney General’s Statement
“Twenty-seven years ago, Jimmy Ellis’s and Elaine Thompson’s lives were stolen. They were victims of a senseless, violent robbery-murder. Justice was finally served,” Marshall said.
“The case against Jeffery Lee was overwhelming and unambiguous. Surveillance footage captured him firing shots. Eyewitnesses confirmed what the camera recorded. And in his own admission, he signed a confession. Court after court, appeal after appeal, the record spoke with one voice and the verdict held strong.”
“Over time, it can be easy to look at these convicted murderers as old men rather than the dangerous killers they were when they stole the lives of their victims and terrorized their communities. Those victims are the people I keep in mind,” Marshall said.
“Nothing can give back what was taken from Jimmy and Elaine and their families, but today we proved that every innocent life is worth fighting for, no matter how long it takes.”
The Case
On Dec. 12, 1998, after a night of drinking and drug use, Lee walked into Jimmy’s Pawn Shop in Orrville, Alabama, saying he wanted to purchase a ring for his girlfriend.
Lee asked employee Helen King about the wedding rings in the jewelry display case and acknowledged he did not have money, saying he would return when he got money from his grandmother. After purchasing a pint of liquor, he left the pawn shop.
Lee, his brother and their cousin drove down the street and parked, where Lee drank the liquor and smoked marijuana laced with cocaine.
Minutes later, Lee returned to the pawn shop with a sawed-off shotgun while his accomplices waited outside. He fired at the store’s owner, Jimmy Ellis, and employees Helen King and Elaine Thompson. He then walked around the shop and attempted to open the cash register but failed, finally leaving and abandoning the murder weapon on the store counter.
Ellis and Thompson were killed by the close-range shotgun blasts. King was wounded but survived, pretending to be dead until Lee left, then locking the door and calling 911. Lee attempted to re-enter but could not because the door was locked. He and his accomplices left before law enforcement arrived.
Arrest and Conviction
The men briefly visited family before fleeing to Newnan, Georgia, where they rented a motel room. Lee’s brother and cousin departed later that day, but Lee remained in hiding.
Law enforcement apprehended Lee in the early morning of Dec. 13, 1998, in Coweta County, Georgia. He signed a confession shortly afterward.
On April 12, 2000, Lee was unanimously convicted on four counts, including three counts of capital murder. The trial court sentenced him to death, and the conviction and sentence were upheld at every level of appeal.
Capital Punishment in Alabama
The William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore houses Alabama’s execution chamber, and it is where executions in the state are carried out regardless of where the underlying crime occurred. The Orrville killings took place in Dallas County, roughly 130 miles north.
The interval between the 1998 crime and the 2026 execution — 27 years — is within the typical range for capital cases in the United States, which move through direct appeal, state post-conviction review and federal habeas proceedings before an execution date is set.
Capital punishment remains a subject of sustained public debate in Alabama and nationally, with arguments centering on deterrence, the risk of wrongful conviction, cost, method and proportionality. This article reports the state’s account of the case and the attorney general’s statement.
Update: The Sentence Behind the Sentence — and the Two Dozen Cases Like It
Updated Sept. 20, 2026.
Jeffery Lee was not sentenced to death by the jury that convicted him. He was sentenced to death by the judge who overruled it.
The jury in Lee’s case voted 7-5 to give him life imprisonment. Under Alabama’s judicial override practice, a trial judge could reject a jury’s sentencing recommendation in a capital case and impose death instead. The judge in Lee’s case did exactly that.
Alabama abolished judicial override in 2017, ending the ability of judges to change a jury’s sentencing decision in capital cases. The law was not made retroactive. An estimated two dozen other Alabama death row inmates remain under sentences imposed through the same practice, before Gov. Kay Ivey signed the change.
That makes Lee’s execution the clearest test yet of how the state intends to treat those cases — and the answer, for now, appears to be that a repealed practice still governs the sentences it produced.
The Governor’s Position
Ivey, who declined to intervene, addressed the override question directly in her statement following the execution.
“In June, after Mr. Lee attempted to avoid his deserved death sentence, I reaffirmed my commitment that justice would ultimately be served. Tonight, that promise was fulfilled for his victims, Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson, as well as for their loved ones who have long-awaited his sentence to be carried out,” Ivey said. “This case underscores exactly why the law passed in 2017 ending so-called ‘judicial override’ did not apply to existing death sentences like Mr. Lee’s. These victims have waited long enough, and I pray they can feel peace and have closure.”
What Lee’s Attorneys Said
Lee’s legal team framed the same facts as an indictment of the state’s position.
“His death sentence rested solely on judicial override — an old law that Alabama has repealed,” Lee’s attorneys said in a statement after the execution. “The State itself concluded this practice was wrong enough to abandon yet still put a man to death under it. That is a moral failure, not just a legal formality.”
Supporters of Lee’s clemency bid held a rally outside the Alabama Capitol under the banner “HONOR THE JURY,” and gathered in a vigil outside the Alabama Governor’s Mansion on the night of the execution.
The Method Fight That Delayed the Execution by 98 Days
The execution was carried out 98 days after Lee won a last-minute reprieve, and the reason involves an agreement the state made with him eight years ago.
Lee filed a lawsuit in 2016 challenging Alabama’s lethal injection protocol. After the state authorized nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method, Lee selected nitrogen as his preferred method. He agreed to dismiss the lethal injection lawsuit in 2018 because the state agreed that “if he is to be executed, defendants will carry out that execution by nitrogen hypoxia.”
Lee had been scheduled to be executed on June 11 by nitrogen gas. That execution was called off when a judge ruled the state’s nitrogen gas method violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to lift the ruling. It was a loss for the state, which began using the gas method in 2024.
The Alabama attorney general’s office filed paperwork the next day, June 12, to set a new execution date — this time using lethal injection.
Lee’s lawyers argued the state was bound by the terms of the 2018 agreement not to use lethal injection. The attorney general’s office asked the high court to let the execution proceed, arguing that nothing precluded the switch. The U.S. Supreme Court denied Lee’s request for a stay on Thursday afternoon, turning back the request without comment.
Where Alabama’s Execution Methods Stand
For decades, lethal injection was the generally preferred execution method in the United States, until problems procuring and administering the drugs led states including Alabama to consider alternatives.
Lethal injection remains Alabama’s primary execution method. Nitrogen gas, which the state began using in 2024, involves replacing breathable air with gas through a respirator mask, causing death from lack of oxygen. Nitrogen has now been used in seven executions in Alabama and one in Louisiana.
The judge’s ruling in Lee’s case — that the nitrogen method violates the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment — leaves the state’s secondary method under a cloud even as the execution it delayed went forward by other means.
Additional Details From the Night
Lee, 49, was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m. at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. His was the second execution in Alabama this year, and one of 27 carried out around the United States in 2026.
“All is well. I just want to say to my family, I love them. To my brothers on life row, I love them,” Lee said in his final words.
As the injection began, Lee clenched his fists on the prison gurney. His spiritual adviser held Lee’s feet and appeared to pray. Lee closed his eyes and did not appear to open them again.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Thursday evening that “justice was finally served.”
One More Detail About the Victims
Jimmy Ellis, the pawn shop owner killed in the 1998 robbery, had a second life outside Orrville. A singer whose voice closely resembled Elvis Presley’s, Ellis gained a national following for a time performing as the masked singer “Orion.” He was the subject of a 2015 documentary.
Elaine Thompson was an employee at the store. A third employee survived the shooting by falling to the floor and playing dead, then called 911 after Lee left. That surviving witness testified that Lee had entered the store earlier, asked to see wedding rings and said he would be back after getting money from his grandmother, then returned a short time later with a sawed-off shotgun.
Lee was convicted in 2000 of capital murder and attempted murder.