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Alabama is set to execute a man Thursday for the brutal slayings of an elderly couple with a machete, ball-peen hammer, and a tire iron two decades ago.

Jamie Ray Mills is set to die by lethal injection Thursday night at 6 p.m., although the execution will likely not happen at that precise time due to litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court. The execution will be carried out at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.

He’s facing death by the state’s three-drug lethal injection cocktail instead of nitrogen gas, which was used for the first time in the nation in Alabama in January’s execution of Kenneth Smith. Mills did not elect to change his execution method to nitrogen when inmates were given the opportunity to do so in June 2018.

He’s facing the execution chamber for the June 2004 beating deaths of Floyd and Vera Hill. The elderly couple were beaten with a machete, a ball-peen hammer, and a tire iron at their Marion County home before, prosecutors said, the Mills stole cash and prescription medication.

Mills, 50, has been fighting his execution in two separate federal lawsuits: One challenging the state’s lethal injection protocol and another claiming his former wife lied when testifying against him.

Wednesday afternoon, Mills’ lawyers from the Equal Justice Initiative appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court after having had the appeal rejected by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday.

The crime

Floyd Hill and Vera Hill had been married 55 years and lived in Guin, a small town in Marion County. According to an inscription on his gravestone, Floyd Hill was an Army veteran of World War II.

Vera Hill, 72, was in poor health. Though 15 years older, Floyd Hill acted as her caretaker.

Court documents laid out the events surrounding the couple’s brutal deaths on June 24, 2004.

Jamie Mills and his then-wife, JoAnn Mills, went to the Hills’ house on County Road 54. According to JoAnn Mills’ testimony at Jamie Mills’ trial, the Hills let the couple inside for Jamie Mills to use their phone. After he made several phone calls, Vera Hill wanted to show JoAnn Mills some of the items in their shed that she was planning to sell at a yard sale.

Floyd Hill unlocked the shed and everyone looked at the items for sale, according to JoAnn Mills’ testimony. After that, Jamie Mills and Floyd Hill continued to talk inside the shed while the women stepped outside.

JoAnn Mills said that she heard a loud noise and saw her husband swinging something. She followed Vera Hill back inside the shed, when she saw Floyd Hill lying on the ground. Then, she said, Jamie Mills hit Vera Hill in the head with a hammer.

Jamie Mills continued to beat the couple, JoAnn Mills said. At some point, the Mills left the shed and went into the Hill home and stole various items, including Floyd Hills’ wallet, Vera Hills’ purse, a phone, and a tacklebox containing prescription medication.

Guin police stopped the couple the next day when they were leaving their house with the murder weapons and bloody clothes.

The Hills were found after one of their adult grandchildren stopped by to check on them the night of the murders and couldn’t find them. When police arrived and found the elderly couple in their shed, Floyd Hill was pronounced dead at the scene.

Vera Hill was taken to a nearby hospital with serious injuries, and later transferred to UAB Hospital in Birmingham. She died September 12, 2004. Court records show her cause of death was “complications of blunt head trauma.”

JoAnn Mills initially told police a local drug dealer had committed the murders.

But the murder weapons, along with Jamie Mills’ bloody clothes, were found in the Mills car trunk. Jamie Mills has argued that the car trunk didn’t lock, and the drug dealer had access to the couple’s car on the day of the crime.

He’s maintained his innocence.

The lawsuits

Mills has been fighting his execution through two separate appeals in federal court. Both claims have been denied by lower courts. Currently, the case is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals rejected both of Mills’ arguments. Both orders were issued by a three-judge panel.

In his lawsuit challenging Alabama’s three-drug lethal injection method, Mills had argued that Alabama’s “practice of restraining its condemned prisoners on a gurney before execution will violate his constitutional rights to access the courts, to counsel, to due process, and against cruel and unusual punishment.”

While the intravenous lines are established for a death row inmate’s lethal injection, no one is allowed to be in the room except for state officials. Mills had challenged that procedure, but the court ruled that “Mills has no constitutionally protected interest in having counsel present throughout his execution.”

The appellate judges also remarked on a lower court’s ruling that called Mills’ lawyers delay in filing his lawsuit “inexplicable and inexcusable.”

The appeals court ruling Wednesday said, “A reasonably diligent plaintiff would have sought a stay (of execution) much sooner.”

In his lawsuit, Mills cited several executions dating back to 2022, when a controversial execution and two aborted execution attempts led Gov. Kay Ivey to halt executions for several months.

11th Circuit Judge Nancy Abudu wrote a concurring opinion “to ensure Mills’ concerns regarding Alabama’s execution process are appropriately acknowledged.”

“While precedent does not establish that these conditions are unconstitutional per se, Alabama’s pattern of delay during executions is troubling. Mills has a valid fear that he will be unnecessarily placed on the execution gurney if a stay is in place, while the IV team is not attempting to establish IV access, or while officials transport witnesses to the viewing area, without being given any updates from officials on the status of his cases or the ongoing execution protocol.”

Mills’ other lawsuit concerns the testimony of his former common-law wife, JoAnn Mills. After her testimony, JoAnn Mills pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of murder and was sentenced to life in prison. She will be considered for parole in December 2027.

Jamie Mills was convicted and on an 11-1 vote the jury recommended he be sentenced to death.

Jamie Mills’ lawyers have long argued that Jamie Mills had testified against him to get a better sentence for herself, and that she had a plea deal in place before she took the stand. Prosecutors have always denied the claim.

“No reasonable jurist could conclude that the district court abused its discretion in rejecting this argument,” the appellate court judges wrote.

Judge Abudu wrote another concurring opinion in that lawsuit. “The death penalty is the harshest punishment one can receive in this country… Unfortunately, even when a petitioner’s life hangs in the balance, our case law does not extend sufficient procedural and substantive due process protections.”

Advocates from several organizations that oppose the death penalty delivered a petition to Gov. Kay Ivey on Tuesday opposing the lethal injection. Ivey has the power to commute a death sentence but has never done so. Along with the petition opposing Mills’ execution, advocates delivered two other petitions opposing Alabama’s nitrogen hypoxia execution method and seeking greater transparency in the execution process.

Abudu wrote in her opinion on the lethal injection lawsuit, “Although those on death row are considered the most detested members of society, our humanity remains dependent on carrying out the most severe penalty in the least barbaric way.”