Gov. Kay Ivey sets July execution date for Keith Edmund Gavin

Gov. Kay Ivey Thursday set a summer execution date for death row inmate Keith Edmund Gavin, sentenced to death for the 1998 murder of William Clinton Clayton Jr. during a robbery.

Gavin is scheduled to be executed between midnight July 17 and 6 a.m. July 19 by lethal injection.

According to a case filing, a little after 6 p.m. on March 6, 1998, Clayton, a contract courier for Corporate Express Delivery Systems, Inc., was shot and killed while sitting in his van outside the Regions Bank in downtown Centre. He had completed his deliveries for the day and stopped at the bank to retrieve cash from the ATM to take his spouse out to dinner.

A jury convicted Gavin of the crime in 1999 and recommended he be executed by a vote of 10-2.

Gavin’s execution is the third scheduled by the state in 2024. A Kenneth Eugene Smith was executed in January by nitrogen for the 1988 murder-for-hire of Elizabeth Sennett. Jamie Ray Mills’ execution for the 2004 double murder of Floyd and Vera Hill is scheduled to take place from midnight May 30 until 6 a.m. May 31.