Alabama executed prisoner Jeffery Lee, convicted of the killings of two people, on Thursday evening by lethal injection after the U.S. Supreme Court previously prevented the state from using nitrogen gas, officials said.
\n\nThe execution of Lee occurred after the Supreme Court denied his request to intervene as it had before, when it halted his planned execution by gas set for June.
\n\nLee was executed by lethal injection at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore and was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m., the state Department of Corrections said. He declined a final meal, it said.
\n\n“Justice was finally served,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement after the execution. He said that the people Lee killed were “victims of a senseless, violent robbery-murder.”
\n\nLee challenged the state’s planned use of lethal injection by arguing that he didn’t choose it and the state initially agreed not to utilize it. The high court didn’t explain its decision hours ahead of the execution.
\n\nLee, 49, was convicted of murder in the fatal shootings of two people in a 1998 pawnshop robbery near Selma: store owner Jimmy Ellis, an acclaimed Elvis Presley impersonator, and his ex-wife Elaine Thompson, who also…
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