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

By Nina Giraldo, CNN

(CNN) — The Alabama jury in Jeffery Lee’s trial spent several days listening to evidence and contemplating whether he should live or die.

One juror who spoke to CNN was among the 7-5 majority that voted for the then 21-year-old to be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for the 1998 murders of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson and the attempted murder of Helen King.

When the juror later learned a judge had overturned the recommendation and sentenced Lee to death, it felt devastating, the juror said.

“That was my first time realizing that I had wasted my time serving on a jury,” said the juror, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.

Almost 30 years later, Lee faces execution by nitrogen gas Thursday despite the fact the jury at his trial voted for life. The judge overturned the jury’s vote under a since-abolished procedure called judicial override, where a judge could override a jury’s sentencing recommendation. Alabama repealed the practice in 2017 for all future cases.

Having exhausted all other appeals, his lawyers have asked Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to grant him clemency and honor the jury’s original decision. Lee has also challenged the constitutionality of his execution method – an appeal still under consideration by the courts.

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

Lee is one of 27 people in Alabama who still face the death penalty due to judicial override, said MiAngel Cody, one of Lee’s lawyers.

In their clemency petition, Lee’s defense team asked Ivey “to finish the work she started,” and dismantle judicial override retroactively, Cody said. A bill now making its way through the Alabama legislature also seeks to resentence defendants in capital murder cases who were sentenced to death through judicial override.

“I think any person would be alarmed to know that their state can execute someone even if the jury never voted that they receive the death penalty,” Cody said.

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

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

Executing Lee under a discarded law, Cody said, makes his punishment a “function of the time, and not the crime.”

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

Lee told CNN it took years for him to “face the fact” he had killed people.

“Even now, it’s hard for me to accept that I was capable of something like that,” Lee said in a phone call from Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama.

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

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

The murders of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson

On December 12, 1998, a 21-year-old Lee walked into Jimmy’s Pawn Shop in Orville, Alabama, according to a 2013 federal appeals ruling upholding his conviction and sentence. He spoke with employee Helen King about buying a wedding ring and left, saying he would come back with the money to purchase one.

Moments later, Lee returned holding a shotgun.

“What’s up, m*therf**kers?” he said, and began firing.

Lee shot shop owner Jimmy Ellis in the arm and then fatally in the chest, employee Elaine Thompson in the face and King in her hand, court documents said. King pretended to be dead as Lee tried to wrench open the cash register. He was unable to and left, leaving the gun he had used on the counter.

With Lee gone, King dialed 911 and locked the shop’s doors, court documents said. Lee attempted to reenter to grab the gun he left, but was unable to open the front door, according to the court documents, which cited a written statement in which he admitted guilt.

Police found Lee in a Georgia motel early the next day, and Lee signed the written confession shortly after. He wrote the first shot at Ellis was accidental, but admitted the rest of the shooting was intentional.

A nearby business owner testified in court that the shooting left the community “frightened and angry,” according to court documents.

Ellis’s son told jurors his father’s death “tore (his) world apart,” court documents said. Thompson’s daughter testified her mother had been her “very best friend” and she suffered nightmares because of her murder.

“The Defendant with cold precision and premeditation using a weapon designed for the sole purpose of extinguishing human life mercilessly gunned down 3 people who were doing nothing more than trying to earn a living,” the judge wrote in his sentencing order. He added, “Miraculously Helen King was spared and he only snuffed out the lives of two yet, in those few seconds of mayhem, he destroyed the lives of many.”

Lee’s legal team does not want to minimize the pain families of the victims have experienced, Cody, Lee’s attorney, told CNN.

“That is real, and that is something that certainly should go into the calculus of what is the appropriate punishment here,” Cody said. She added, “That is exactly why we understand that the best that Mr. Lee can hope for is permanent banishment from society.”

In their clemency petition, Lee’s team also pointed to his troubled past as a reason they feel he deserves to have his sentence commuted, Cody said.

Lee grew up in an impoverished home where he suffered physical abuse from his father, according to a website by his legal team. Lee began huffing gasoline at seven years old, court documents stated. He turned to alcohol at 11, Cody said, and used cocaine and marijuana as a teenager.

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

Alabama as an ‘outlier’ in death penalty statutes

Only a handful of states ever allowed judicial override. Unlike its counterparts, however, Alabama was the only state where judges frequently overrode life sentences in favor of death, according to a 2011 report by the Equal Justice Initiative, or EJI.

“So people like Mr. Lee were an outlier even when it was legal, but it’s no longer even legal, which puts him in a much more problematic place in terms of fairness,” said Randy Susskind, deputy director of the EJI, a non-profit providing legal representation for people it believes have been denied justice in court.

Judges could override life or death verdicts with judicial override, the report said, but in 92% of overrides Alabama judges imposed the death penalty. Alabama judges overrode jury verdicts 107 times between 1976 and 2011, the report said. Judges also tended to impose death sentences through judicial override more frequently during election years, the EJI report stated.

At the time of the report, judicial override accounted for more than a fifth of the people on Alabama’s death row and was the “primary reason” the state had the highest death sentencing and execution rate in the country, the report said.

Maher told CNN judicial override was uncommon nationwide because “most judges respect the duties and the responsibilities of the jury.”

“To the founders of this country, the jury was a fundamental part of our democracy and our legal system, and that’s why they let them decide criminal cases,” Maher said.

Prior to Ivey signing the bill that abolished the procedure, there was a “general sense” judicial override was unconstitutional and would soon be deemed as such by the Supreme Court, Susskind said. The Court had just ruled Florida’s judicial override unconstitutional in 2016.

Alabama was the last state to eliminate the procedure a year later. The repeal passed the state senate 30-1, according to Dick Brewbaker, a former Republican state senator who sponsored the bill and said he received “no negative pushback” from his conservative constituency.

Now retired, Brewbaker is among those calling for death sentences imposed through judicial override to be commuted.

“What we’ve got now are people that have been sentenced under two separate standards, and that’s not right,” Brewbaker said. “All of the common law just cries out against it.”

Lee says prison helped him change

In asking for clemency, Lee’s advocates also point to the positive changes he has made in his life since going to prison, according to Cody: Lee has become deeply religious and has held several leadership roles in prison, including as a preacher and church teacher.

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

Lee said he hasn’t gotten the urge to do all he needs to before his execution date: call his parents, siblings and his now 28-year-old son, who was two months old at the time of his arrest.

“Even though I was in prison, I never tried to miss any important moments in his life, and I always tell him I’m so thankful that he turned out totally opposite of me,” Lee said about his son, who served in the Army and recently got engaged.

He remains hopeful Ivey will grant him clemency before his execution Thursday.

“I believe in God, and I haven’t heard from Him that June 11 is my last day on Earth,” Lee said. “I have to believe that.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.