A jury voted for Jeffery Lee to receive a life sentence. Alabama plans to execute him anyway

The Alabama jury at Jeffery Lee’s trial listened to the evidence for several days, considering whether he should live or die.

He was among a 7-5 majority that voted to sentence the then-21-year-old to life in prison without parole for the 1998 murders of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson and the attempted murder of Helen King, a juror told CNN.

The juror later said it was a devastating feeling when he learned a judge had overturned the recommendation and sentenced Lee to death.

“This was the first time I realized I was wasting my time serving on the jury,” said the juror, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.

Nearly 30 years later, Lee confronts execution by nitrogen gas Thursday, even though the jury at his trial voted for life. The judge overruled the jury under a procedure called judicial override, which has since been abolished and in which a judge can override the jury’s recommendation on sentencing. In 2017, Alabama repealed this practice for all future cases.

Having exhausted all other objections, his lawyers asked Alabama Governor Kay Ivey to grant him leniency and respect the jury’s initial verdict. Lee also challenged the constitutionality of the method of execution; This objection is still being evaluated by the courts.

A spokesperson for the governor told CNN that Ivey “plans to move forward with the execution.”

MiAngel Cody, one of Lee’s attorneys, said Lee is one of 27 people still facing the death penalty in Alabama because of the judicial override.

In the clemency petition, Cody said Lee’s defense team wants Ivey to “finish what she started” and retroactively remove jurisdiction. A bill is also currently making its way through the Alabama legislature trying to annoy the defendants Judgment was overruled in capital murder cases with a death penalty.

“I think any person who knows that their state could execute someone even if the jury doesn’t vote for the death penalty would panic,” Cody said.

Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said the concept of judicial override reveals the “disconnect” between today’s law and the standards for how people were sentenced to death in the past.

“We are executing people who were convicted years ago, sometimes decades ago, who would not be sentenced to death if they were tried today,” Maher said.

Cody said Lee’s execution under a repealed law makes his sentence “a function of time, not the crime.”

A family member of Jimmy Ellis declined to comment. CNN was unable to reach King or other victims’ family members for comment.

Lee told CNN it took him years to “come to terms with the reality” that he had killed people.

“Even now it’s very hard for me to accept that I could do something like this,” Lee said in a telephone interview from Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall on Monday called for the execution to proceed. saying in a statement Courts have repeatedly upheld Lee’s conviction and sentence, evoking memories of his victims.

“These victims are people I keep in mind,” he said. “I think of the hopes and dreams of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson, their futures and lives with their families that were senselessly taken from them by the deliberate and cruel actions of Jeffery Lee.”

Murder of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson

According to a 2013 federal appeals decision that upheld his conviction and sentence, on December 12, 1998, Lee, 21, walked into Jimmy’s Pawn Shop in Orville, Alabama. He talked to employee Helen King about buying a wedding ring and left, saying he would come back with money to buy a ring.

A few minutes later, Lee returned with a shotgun in hand.

“What’s up, motherfuckers?” he said and started shooting.

According to court documents, Lee killed store owner Jimmy Ellis by shooting him in the arm and then the chest, employee Elaine Thompson in the face and King in the hand. King pretended to be dead while Lee tried to open the safe. He couldn’t stand it and left the gun he used on the counter.

With Lee gone, King called 911 and locked the store’s doors, according to court documents. Lee tried to go back inside to retrieve the gun he had abandoned, but was unable to open the front door, according to court documents that included a written statement in which he admitted his guilt.

Police found Lee at a Georgia motel early the next day, and Lee signed the written confession shortly thereafter. He wrote that the first shot at Ellis was accidental, but acknowledged that the remaining shots were intentional.

A nearby business owner said the shooting left the community “scared and angry,” according to court documents.

Ellis’ son told jurors that his father’s death “shattered his world,” according to court documents. Thompson’s daughter testified that her mother was her “best friend” and that she had nightmares about the murder.

“With cold precision and pre-planning, using a weapon designed solely for the purpose of extinguishing human life, the defendant brutally shot and killed 3 people who were doing nothing but trying to make a living,” the judge wrote in the sentencing decision. He added, “Miraculously, Helen King survived and only extinguished the lives of two people, but in those few seconds of chaos she destroyed the lives of many others.”

Lee’s attorney, Cody, told CNN that Lee’s legal team did not want to minimize the pain experienced by the victims’ families.

“That’s real and it’s definitely something that needs to be taken into account in the calculation of what the appropriate punishment is here,” Cody said. He added, “That’s why we understand that the best Mr. Lee can hope for is permanent removal from society.”

In the clemency petition, Lee’s team also cited his troubled past as one reason they thought he deserved a commuted sentence, Cody said.

Lee grew up in a poor home where he was subjected to physical abuse by his father. A website prepared by the legal team. According to court documents, Lee began vomiting gasoline when he was seven years old. Cody said he started drinking alcohol at age 11 and used cocaine and marijuana in his youth.

Lee’s arrest after the murders was the first time he received mental health treatment, Cody said.

Alabama considered ‘outlier’ in death penalty laws

Only a handful of states have allowed judicial override. But unlike its peers, Alabama was the only state where judges frequently overturned life sentences in favor of death. According to a 2011 report by the Equal Justice Initiative, or EJI.

“So people like Mr. Lee were outliers even when it was legal, but now it’s not even legal, which puts it in a much more problematic place from a justice standpoint,” said Randy Susskind, deputy director of EJI, a nonprofit organization that provides legal representation to people who believe they have been denied justice in court.

The report noted that judges can overrule life-or-death decisions through judicial override, but in 92% of overrides, Alabama judges imposed the death penalty. The report stated that Alabama judges overruled jury verdicts 107 times between 1976 and 2011. According to the EJI report, judges tended to impose death sentences more frequently during election years, overriding jurisdiction.

Judicial override was the “primary reason” the state had the highest death penalty and execution rate in the country, the report said, adding that more than one-fifth of people sentenced to death in Alabama at the time of the report were overruled.

Maher told CNN that judicial override is unusual nationwide because “most judges respect the duties and responsibilities of the jury.”

“For the founders of this country, juries were a fundamental part of our democracy and our legal system, and that’s why they allowed them to decide criminal cases,” Maher said.

Susskind said that before Ivey signed the bill eliminating the procedure, there was a “general sense” that judicial invalidation was unconstitutional and would soon be recognized as such by the Supreme Court. The court had just ruled Florida court ruling unconstitutional In 2016.

Alabama became the last state to eliminate the procedure, a year later. The repeal passed the state Senate 30-1 and did not receive “negative pushback” from the conservative electorate, according to former Republican state senator Dick Brewbaker, who sponsored the bill.

Brewbaker, now retired, is among those calling for judicial death sentences to be commuted.

“Right now we have people being convicted under two different standards, and that’s not right,” Brewbaker said. “All common law opposes it.”

Lee says prison helped change

While Lee’s defenders plead for mercy, Cody says, they also point to the positive changes he has made in his life since entering prison: Lee has become deeply religious and has taken on several leadership roles in prison, including becoming a preacher and church teacher.

“I made the worst mistake a person can make and struggled with suicidal thoughts for years,” Lee said. He added that he eventually realized that he had to forgive himself before asking others to forgive him.

Lee said he didn’t have the urge to do everything he needed to do before his execution date: call his parents, his siblings and his son, now 28, who was two months old when he was arrested.

“Even though I was in prison, I never tried to miss any important moments in his life, and I always tell him that I am so grateful that he is the complete opposite of me,” Lee said of her son, who is serving in the military and recently got engaged.

He is hopeful Ivey will grant him clemency before he is executed Thursday.

“I believe in God, and I didn’t hear from Him that June 11 was my last day on Earth,” Lee said. “I have to believe this.”

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