An Alabama Prisoner Says He is Innocent After Being Sentenced to Death for Shooting and Killing a Father of Seven

A man on death row in Alabama who is scheduled to be put to death on Thursday says he is not guilty of shooting and killing a 68-year-old courier van driver in 1998. The driver was described as a beloved father of seven.

Keith Edmund Gavin, 64, will be the 10th person in the country and the third person to be killed in Alabama this year if his lethal injection goes as planned.

The execution will happen just two days after the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the execution of Ruben Gutierrez in Texas for killing a retired schoolteacher who was 85 years old in 1998. The high court said that Gutierrez’s requests for DNA tests must be looked at by a lower court before he can be put to death if that is even possible.

William Clinton Clayton Jr. was killed during a failed bank robbery in the city of Centre in northeastern Alabama, which is about 85 miles northeast of Birmingham. Gavin was found guilty of murder.

As the date of Gavin’s execution draws near, USA TODAY looks back at the crime, Gavin’s personality, and the events that led to Clayton’s death.

The man who went by the name Bill, William Clinton Clayton Jr., was married and had seven children. This week, his youngest son, Matt Clayton, told USA TODAY that his dad was great, a “gentle giant,” and a hard worker who worked 14 hours a day to support his family.

Clay was getting ready to take his wife of 38 years out to dinner on March 6, 1998. He was in his Corporate Express Delivery Systems van when he pulled over at Regions Bank in downtown Centre to use the ATM to get some cash for their date night.

Gavin, whose base is Chicago, had driven to the area with his cousin Dewayne Meeks to find a woman he had met before. USA TODAY got a copy of court papers that show Gavin and Meeks got to the downtown Center at the same time that Clayton went to the ATM.

Meeks told the judge that Gavin got out of the car, walked over to Clayton’s van’s driver’s side, and fired two shots while the men were stopped at a stoplight near Regions Bank. Court records show that Gavin got in Clayton’s van while Clayton was still inside and bleeding out and followed Meeks. Meeks then drove off in his car.

Daniel Smith, a detective for the local district attorney’s office, said that he was in the area when he heard on the radio that someone had been shot and that the shooter and the victim were both in a white van. Soon after, Smith saw the van going too fast and driving badly.

The chase went on for a few minutes until the van suddenly stopped. The driver got out and shot at Smith before running into some nearby woods, Smith said. Clayton was “barely alive” when Smith went to the van to check on him. He died soon after at a hospital, according to court papers.

A short time after the van chase, more police officers showed up and started looking for Gavin. Soon after, they caught him. He tried to run away, but “he stopped when an officer fired a warning shot,” according to court papers. Gavin told the officers, “I hadn’t shot anyone and I don’t have a gun.”

After about a week, the gun—a 40-caliber Glock pistol—was found in the area. Ballistics tests showed that it had been used to kill Clayton, according to court papers.

Following interviews with Alabama police in Chicago, Meeks was caught on a murder charge weeks later. He had driven back to Chicago.

After the charges against Meeks were dropped, he was one of the main witnesses for the state in Gavin’s trial. Court papers show that two other witnesses said for sure that Gavin was the shooter.

Keith Edmund Gavin says he is innocent.

Gavin has said that his cousin was the “true perpetrator” and that he only testified against him after the prosecutors decided to drop the charges against him. Meeks was not found guilty of the crime, and USA TODAY was trying to get in touch with him to get his opinion.

Gavin had been found guilty of murder in 1982 and spent 17 years of a 34-year sentence. He also said that his lawyers didn’t do a good job during his trial for Clayton’s murder and that the prosecution didn’t have enough forensic or DNA evidence against him.

In 2020, a federal court in Alabama said Gavin’s lawyers weren’t doing their jobs, which was against his right to a lawyer, and said that the constitution called for a new sentence trial. That ruling was later changed after being appealed.

After Gavin was found guilty, proof of “significant juror misconduct” was found, which also went against his “right to a fair and impartial trial,” according to records from the appeal court.

Federal court papers say Gavin was one of 12 children and came from a family with “multi-generational family dysfunction.” His parents both came from “highly dysfunctional families with histories of drug use, alcoholism, and incarceration,” the papers say.

The records show that Gavin’s father abused him, his siblings, and their mother after abusing Gavin as a kid. His father would hit him and his brothers with extension cords, sticks, hoses, and his fist until they “drew blood,” the papers say.

The papers say that most of Gavin’s brothers were involved with drugs, gangs, or other illegal activities while living in Chicago homes that were too crowded. Before he turned 18, Gavin also saw some family members work as prostitutes.

A group of gang members beat Gavin with baseball bats and guns while he was in the hospital when he was 17.

“Unemployed, depressed, and his family was destitute,” the records say Gavin was when he got out of jail in Illinois in 1997.

Alabama will not do an autopsy on Keith Edmund Gavin.

According to the lawsuit made by Gavin’s lawyers last month, his body should not be autopsied after the execution because Gavin was a “devout Muslim.”

“According to his religion, the body is a holy building that must be kept whole,” the claim says. “Mr. Gavin sincerely believes that an autopsy would desecrate his body and violate the sanctity of keeping his human body intact.”