Jeffrey Lee

Jeffery Lee was an Alabama man executed by the state on September 17, 2026, for the December 1998 murders of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson during a robbery at a pawn shop in Orrville, Alabama. He was 49 years old. Ellis, the shop's owner, had recorded music under the stage name Orion and was known for a singing voice often compared to Elvis Presley. Thompson, who worked at the shop and was Ellis's former wife and partner, was killed alongside him. A third employee survived the attack by pretending to be dead, and Lee was also convicted of attempting to murder another woman during the same crime.

Lee was 21 at the time of the robbery. At his trial, a jury voted to sentence him to life in prison rather than death, but the presiding judge overturned that recommendation using a legal procedure known as judicial override, which allowed judges in Alabama to impose a death sentence despite a jury's contrary vote. Alabama later became the last state in the country to abolish judicial override, a fact that Lee's supporters and some lawmakers raised repeatedly in the years before his execution as they argued his death sentence had been imposed unfairly.

Lee's case drew national attention in 2026 because of a dispute over the method of execution. He was first scheduled to die by nitrogen gas on June 11, 2026, but two days earlier a federal judge permanently blocked Alabama from using its nitrogen gas protocol, ruling that it amounted to unconstitutionally cruel punishment. On the day of the scheduled execution, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6 to 3 decision, declined to lift that block, and Lee's execution did not go ahead as planned. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey then set a new execution date using lethal injection, announcing on July 30, 2026, that Lee would be put to death on September 17, 2026.

The execution went forward as scheduled at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. It began just after 6 p.m. and Lee was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m. In his final words, he told his family he loved them and sent a message to the other men on death row, whom he called his brothers. His execution was one of dozens carried out across the United States in 2026 amid renewed use of the death penalty in several states.

Reaction to Lee's execution was divided. U.S. Representative Terri Sewell, whose district includes Orrville, issued a statement calling Lee's crimes heinous and inexcusable while extending sympathy to the decades of grief endured by the families of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said the state remained focused on delivering justice for the victims. Death penalty opponents and some legal advocates continued to point to the jury's original vote for life and to the now abolished practice of judicial override as reasons the case remained troubling even after the execution was carried out.