Alabama plans to carry out first execution of 2026

The state of Alabama plans to conduct its first execution of 2026 on Thursday, putting to death a man convicted of capital murder for the murder and sexual assault of a 5-year-old girl in Russell County in December 2021.

Jeremy Williams, 41, pleaded guilty to four counts of kidnapping and rape of a minor in March 2024.

But the court continued with the trial because state law required the case to proceed to a trial because it involved the death penalty. A jury convicted him on all four ounts and the judge sentenced him to death. Williams waived his appeals and requested the state expedite his execution.

Alabama has been a state that has vigorously pursued the death penalty in recent years. The state executed two people in 2023, six in 2024 and five in 2025.

Gov. Kay Ivey announced Williams’ execution date in June.

The governor set two executions earlier this year. In February, Ivey set a March execution date for Charles “Sonny” Burton, who was convicted of felony murder in 1992 and sentenced to death for being involved in the robbery of a Talladega AutoZone in 1991, in which customer Doug Battle was shot and killed.

Burton did not pull the trigger and was not present in the store when Battle was shot. Derrick DeBruce, who was convicted of killing Battle, later had his sentence commuted to life in prison and died while still serving the sentence in 2020.

Ivey in March commuted Burton’s sentence to life without parole, citing the “disparate circumstances” between DeBruce’s commutation and Burton’s death sentence.

In April, the governor set a June execution date for Jeffrey Lee, convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson during a pawn shop robbery in Orrville in 1998. Lee challenged his execution by nitrogen gas, citing previous executions to argue it amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

A federal district court in May ruled that Alabama could move forward with the gas execution, saying that the execution would create “air hunger” but that in itself did not violate Lee’s Eighth Amendment rights. But a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the ruling, leading to a permanent injunction that barred Alabama from using the nitrogen gas protocol.

The U.S. Supreme Court then affirmed the ruling on the same day that Alabama was preparing to put Lee to death. The Alabama Attorney General then sought to have Lee executed by lethal injection.

The federal district court refused a request from Lee to expand the initial permanent injunction to include lethal injection. Lee is currently scheduled to be executed in September.