Keith Edmund Gavin is set to be the third man Alabama executes this year when it conducts his planned lethal injection on Thursday night.

The 64-year-old is set to die for the March 1998 murder of William “Bill” Clayton Jr. in Cherokee County. Clayton was gunned down near an ATM while getting cash to take his wife on a date that evening.

Gavin’s execution is scheduled for 6 p.m., but could go into the early hours of Friday morning if a court battle ensues.

He filed a handwritten appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday evening.

This story will be updated throughout the afternoon and evening. Updates will be at the top of this page, and the original story continues below.

Execution

Gavin, whose attorneys have not responded to repeated requests for comment from AL.com, is set to be executed via Alabama’s three-drug lethal injection procedure. He did not opt-in to dying by nitrogen gas—a novel method Alabama first tried in January with the execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith—when inmates on Alabama Death Row had the opportunity to do so in June 2018.

He will be the second lethal injection this year. Jamie Ray Mills was executed in May. And, the Alabama Attorney General’s Office is seeking execution orders for at least two more men later this year.

The state is set to have its second nitrogen execution in September. Alan Miller, who survived a lethal injection attempt in 2022, is set to be suffocated using nitrogen gas. So far, Alabama is the only state in the country to have used the new method.

Lawsuits

While Gavin has not specifically challenged Alabama’s fatal injection cocktail in the courts leading up to his execution, he did argue that his devout Muslim faith requires his body to be kept intact after his death and that he didn’t want a state autopsy.

After a brief legal battle in state court, the state obliged his request. “No autopsy will be performed on Keith Edmund Gavin,” said a statement from the Alabama Department of Corrections. “His remains will be picked up by the attending funeral home.”

And, despite that same lawsuit saying Gavin wouldn’t be fighting his impending death, days later Gavin filed a handwritten motion to another judge. He asked for a stay of execution, without involving his attorneys, and for a status that allows poor people to have court filing fees waived.

Cherokee County Circuit Court Judge Shaunathan C. Bell on July 10 ruled that Gavin had more than enough in his prison account to pay the filing fee and denied his request. The judge also dismissed Gavin’s motion for a stay.

Crime

William C. “Bill” Clayton Jr. was a Korean War veteran who retired after working 15 years for L&N Railroad and another decade at AmSouth Bank, according to his obituary. In retirement, the father of seven took a contract job making deliveries for Corporate Express Delivery Systems, Inc.

Just after 6:30 p.m. on March 6, 1998, the 68-year-old Birmingham man’s life ended when he crossed paths with Gavin, who had just arrived in downtown Centre. He had come from Illinois, where he had recently been paroled after serving 17 years of a 34-year sentence for murder.

Clayton had just finished making his deliveries for the day and had stopped in his work van at the Regions Bank in downtown Centre to get cash from the ATM. He was planning to take his wife on a date that evening.

He never got to take his wife to dinner.

Gavin shot Clayton while attempting to rob him at the ATM, according to court records. Then, Gavin pushed him into the passenger seat of the van and drove off.

Several witnesses, including Gavin’s cousin that had traveled from Illinois with him, identified Gavin as the gunman.

An investigator with the Cherokee County District Attorney’s Office testified at Gavin’s trial that he was returning to Centre from Fort Payne when he heard over the radio that there had been a shooting and that both the shooter and the victim were traveling in a white van with lettering on the outside. As he proceeded toward Centre, the investigator said, he saw a van matching the description given out over the radio and followed it.

At one point the van stopped, a man the investigator identified as Gavin got out and fired a round of shots.

Gavin was convicted and sentenced to death on the 10-2 recommendation of a jury.