MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The state of Alabama executed Jeffrey Lee on Thursday evening, ending a 27-year legal odyssey that saw the condemned man successfully block one method of execution only to be killed by another, a final twist in a case defined by a brutal double murder, a broken legal system, and a question that haunted the state until the very end: had justice truly been served?
Lee, 49, was pronounced dead at 6:47 p. m. Central Time at the William C.
Holman Correctional Facility. The execution began with a lethal injection of pentobarbital, a stark reversal from the nitrogen gas protocol that had been scheduled for June but was halted by a federal judge who deemed it too cruel.
The path to Thursday’s execution was anything but straightforward. In June, Lee had won a rare legal victory when a federal judge ruled that Alabama’s nitrogen hypoxia method—which had caused witnesses to observe prisoners shaking, clenching their fists, and gasping for air for up to three minutes—violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
That ruling temporarily spared Lee’s life. But the state moved swiftly, filing for a new death warrant within 24 hours, this time specifying lethal injection. Lee’s legal team filed emergency appeals challenging the new method, arguing that he had been forced to choose between two unconstitutional procedures.
The Supreme Court declined to intervene on Thursday evening, clearing the way for the execution.
Lee’s final statement, delivered through a microphone in the execution chamber, was brief. He reportedly thanked his spiritual advisor and told witnesses he was at peace. He did not address the families of his victims directly.
The drugs began flowing at 6:41 p. m. He was declared dead six minutes later.
The case dates back to December 12, 1998, a day that began with a young man’s desperate need for money and ended with two people dead on the floor of a small-town pawn shop. Lee, then 21, had been awake for hours, consuming alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine. He drove with his brother and cousin to Jimmy’s Pawn and Package Store in Orville, Alabama, a small community in Dallas County.
Inside, he asked an employee, Helen King, to show him wedding rings. He examined them, said he didn’t have the money, and left, promising to return. He did return, but not with cash.
He came back with a sawed-off shotgun. Surveillance video captured the moment Lee entered the store, looked at the live feed of himself on a television screen, and shouted an obscenity before opening fire.
The first blast struck Jimmy Ellis, the store’s owner, in the chest. Lee then turned the weapon on Elaine Thompson, Ellis’s ex-wife, shooting her in the face. He fired again at Helen King, wounding her.
Then he walked back to Ellis and shot him a second time. Ellis and Thompson died at the scene. King, bleeding on the floor, made a split-second decision that saved her life: she played dead.
Lee attempted to pry the cash register from the counter but failed. He left $900 in Ellis’s pocket, took no jewelry, and abandoned the shotgun on the counter before walking out. King waited until she heard him leave, then got up, locked the doors, and called 911.
When Lee returned moments later, he found the doors locked and fled.
He drove to Georgia with his brother and cousin, where they rented a motel room. His brother and cousin later returned to Alabama and went directly to law enforcement, confessing to their involvement and implicating Lee. He was arrested at approximately 4:30 a.
m. on December 13, 1998, in the motel room. He signed a written confession, though he claimed the first shot was accidental.
The victims were not random. Jimmy Ellis was a man of some renown. Born in Pascagoula, Mississippi, Ellis possessed a voice so eerily similar to Elvis Presley’s that Sun Records, the label that launched the King of Rock and Roll, signed him in the 1970s.
He performed under the stage name Orion, wearing a mask to fuel speculation that Presley had faked his death and was recording under a pseudonym.
Ellis’s fan club numbered in the thousands. He recorded multiple albums, and his concerts drew crowds of people hoping to hear the King’s voice one more time. He eventually tore off the mask on stage, attempting to forge a career under his own name.
When the fame faded, he returned to Orville and opened the pawn shop, a quiet life far from the spotlight.
Lee’s trial was swift, lasting less than two days. The evidence was overwhelming: the surveillance video, King’s eyewitness testimony, and Lee’s own confession. The prosecution’s jury selection was aggressive.
Lee is Black; the victims were white. The prosecutor used all 21 of his peremptory strikes to remove Black potential jurors from the panel. All 21.
The jury convicted Lee of two counts of capital murder and one count of attempted murder. During the sentencing phase, the jury voted 7 to 5 in favor of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Under Alabama law at the time, that vote was merely a recommendation.
The presiding judge disagreed with the jury’s decision and overrode it, sentencing Lee to death.
That judicial override would become the cornerstone of Lee’s appeals for the next quarter-century. His attorneys argued that the judge’s decision was unconstitutional, that it violated the jury’s role in sentencing, and that it reflected a systemic bias in Alabama’s capital punishment system. The appeals climbed through state courts, federal courts, and ultimately to the U.
S. Supreme Court, which repeatedly declined to hear the case.
In 2017, Alabama abolished judicial override entirely, with lawmakers acknowledging that judges should never have been allowed to overrule a jury’s sentencing decision. But the change was made non-retroactive. Lee remained on death row, sentenced to die by a process the state itself had deemed unjust.
Lee’s attorneys argued that the non-retroactivity clause was a cruel irony. “Alabama fixed the law,” said Leslie Smith, one of his lawyers. “Jeffrey Lee is still paying the price for when it was broken.”
Over the years, Lee’s case drew attention from death penalty opponents, religious leaders, and civil rights advocates. Sister Helen Prejean, author of “Dead Man Walking,” became a vocal supporter. She visited Lee on death row and said a guard once told her, “You know, the man we’re killing tonight is different from that young brash animal that came in here cursing God and everybody.
He’s changed his life.”
Lee’s prison record showed zero violent infractions in more than 26 years. He became a ministry leader, a chaplain’s assistant, and a mentor to other inmates. He maintained a relationship with his son, who was born two months before the murders, and attempted to guide him from behind bars.
In a statement from death row, Lee said, “When this crime happened, I didn’t know their names. I wanted to know because in my prayers, I wanted to include their names. I didn’t know until I was arraigned.”
He had shot two people, left them on the floor, and fled the state without ever learning who they were.
He also said, “Jeffrey Lee today is not who he was 28 years ago. I’m more caring, more honest, more open, and I live in a way that honors life. Now, I see life as being sacred.
It means everything.”
His transformation did not sway the courts. In March 2026, a death warrant was signed. The execution was scheduled for June 11, 2026, using nitrogen gas.
In an interview before that date, Lee said, “I believe in God and I haven’t heard from him that June 11th is my last day on earth. I have to believe that.”
He was right. On June 10, a federal judge ruled that nitrogen gas was too cruel, citing the documented suffering of previous inmates. The execution was stayed.
But the relief was short-lived. Alabama immediately filed for a new execution date, this time using lethal injection.
Lee’s legal team fought the new method, arguing that he had been forced to choose between two unconstitutional options. In 2018, Lee had actually chosen nitrogen gas as his preferred method, fearing lethal injection. Now that nitrogen was blocked, he challenged lethal injection as well, arguing that the state was simply cycling through methods until it found one that would stick.
The courts disagreed. On September 17, 2026, the execution was carried out. Lee spent most of his final day waiting, as is customary in Alabama.
He ate snacks, spoke with visitors, and waited. His attorneys filed one last emergency petition with the Supreme Court on September 11. It was denied.
In the execution chamber, the curtains opened to reveal Lee already strapped to the gurney, a white sheet covering his lower body, IV lines running from both arms. On one side of the glass sat his supporters. On the other side, kept separate, sat the family and friends of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson.
After 27 years, the two groups faced each other one final time.
The warden read the death warrant and the governor’s order. Lee was given the opportunity to speak. He did not address the victims’ families.
The signal was given, and the 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 began flowing. He went under quickly. His breathing slowed, then stopped.
He was pronounced dead at 6:47 p. m.
The execution brings a close to a case that raised profound questions about justice, fairness, and the finality of the death penalty. Lee’s supporters argue that he was sentenced to death by a judge who overruled a jury’s decision, a practice Alabama later admitted was flawed. They point to his rehabilitation, his clean prison record, and his genuine remorse as evidence that he should have been allowed to live out his life behind bars.
The families of Ellis and Thompson see it differently. For them, Thursday’s execution was the culmination of a 27-year wait for justice. Ellis was a beloved figure in Orville, a man who had once shared a stage with the ghost of Elvis Presley and had come home to live a quiet life.
Thompson was his partner, a woman who was simply at work when a man she had never met walked in with a shotgun.
Helen King, the survivor, testified at trial and has lived with the trauma of that day for nearly three decades. She played dead to survive, listening to the sounds of two people being murdered around her. Her testimony was crucial in securing the conviction.
The state of Alabama has maintained that Lee’s sentence was just, that the evidence was overwhelming, and that the courts, including the U. S. Supreme Court, had ample opportunity to review the case and found no constitutional violation.
The judicial override that sentenced him to death was legal at the time, and the state has argued that retroactively changing the law would undermine the finality of thousands of other cases.
Lee is the third person executed in Alabama in 2026. The state has faced increasing scrutiny over its execution methods, particularly nitrogen gas, which has been used only in Alabama and has been criticized by medical experts and human rights organizations. The federal judge’s ruling in June was a significant setback for the state, but the lethal injection protocol used Thursday is a more traditional method, though it has also faced legal challenges in other states.
As the witnesses filed out of the execution chamber Thursday night, the rain had begun to fall over Holman Correctional Facility. The parking lot slowly emptied. The families of Ellis and Thompson left without speaking to reporters.
Lee’s supporters gathered in a small circle, holding hands and praying.
The question of whether justice was served will likely be debated for years. For the families of the victims, the answer is clear: the man who murdered their loved ones is dead. For Lee’s supporters, the answer is equally clear: the state killed a man who had been sentenced by a broken system, who had transformed his life, and who had spent more than 25 years paying for a crime he committed as a 21-year-old addict with a traumatic brain injury.
What is certain is that Jeffrey Lee is gone. The state of Alabama has carried out its sentence. The case is closed.
But the questions it raised—about the fairness of the death penalty, about the role of race in jury selection, about the power of judges to overrule juries, about the very nature of justice—will not die with him.