Keith Gavin Executed in Alabama: The M*rder of William Clayton Jr. | Final words And Last Meal – =
William Clayton Jr. Just wanted to take his wife out for the night. He stopped at an ATM outside a bank in Centre, Alabama, got some cash, and sat back in his delivery van. He never made it home. The man responsible would spend the next 25 years on death row fighting to stay alive. But this case is not straightforward.
And by the end of this video, you will understand why. To understand how Keith Gavin ended up on Alabama’s death row, we have to go back more than four decades to Cook County, Illinois in 1982. That year, a much younger Keith Gavin was convicted of m*rder. The details of that earlier case are not fully public, but the outcome is clear.
He was sentenced to 34 years in prison. He served 17 of those 34 years. In 1998, Keith Gavin was released on parole. He had spent the better part of two decades locked up. He was in his late 30s. And whatever plans or second chances life might have offered him, he was out. Free. It would not last long. Within months of his release, something happened in a small Alabama town that would seal his fate permanently.
March 6th, 1998. Downtown Centre, Alabama. It was an ordinary evening for William Clinton Clayton Jr. He was a contract delivery driver. The kind of man who worked hard, stayed out of trouble, and went home to his family. That particular evening, he had stopped outside a Regions Bank to use an ATM. He was getting cash.
MORE DETAILS :
He wanted to take his wife out that night. William Clayton was a father of seven. His Corporate Express delivery van was parked on the street. He was sitting in the driver’s seat. And that is where Keith Gavin found him. Gavin approached the van. He opened the driver’s door. He shot William Clayton Jr. twice.
Then he pushed Clayton into the passenger seat and drove away. We know this in part because Gavin’s own cousin, Dwayne Meeks, was with him that evening. Meeks later testified about what he witnessed. The sudden violence, the stolen van pulling away from the curb and disappearing into the street. William Clayton was still alive when law enforcement caught up to the van.
He wouldn’t survive. An investigator with the District Attorney’s Office of the 9th Judicial Circuit spotted the stolen Corporate Express van shortly after the shooting and gave chase. Gavin stopped the vehicle in the middle of an intersection. But instead of surrendering, he turned and opened fire on the officer.
Then he ran on foot into the woods nearby. Clayton was found in the passenger seat of the van barely alive. Paramedics rushed him to the nearest hospital. He was pronounced dead on arrival. The search for Gavin moved into the tree line. Officers brought in a search dog to track him through the woods. They found him hiding in a creek.
As he attempted to flee again, an officer fired a warning shot into the air. That was enough. Keith Gavin was taken into custody. He was charged with the m*rder of William Clinton Clayton Jr. He was also charged with attempted m*rder for firing at a law enforcement officer during the chase. The case went to trial and that is where things begin to get complicated.
Gavin was convicted on two counts of capital m*rder. The first, the m*rder of William Clayton, was committed in the course of a robbery. He stole the van. The second, Gavin had been convicted of another m*rder within the past 20 years, the 1982 Illinois case. He was also convicted of attempted m*rder for firing at the officer during the chase.
The jury recommended the death penalty, but the vote was not unanimous. It was 10 to 2. In most states in America, a death sentence requires all 12 jurors to agree. In Alabama at the time, it required only 10. Just one more vote in Gavin’s favor, and this story may have ended very differently. The judge accepted the recommendation.
Keith Gavin was sentenced to death. He was sent to Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, one of the state’s most well-known death row units. And there, for the next 25 years, he waited. 25 years is a long time to sit in the same place knowing how your life is supposed to end. What Keith Gavin did with that time is genuinely unexpected.
He converted to Islam. He studied. He practiced. And over time, he became a spiritual leader within the facility itself, serving as the prison’s Imam, leading prayers for other men on death row. Think about that for a moment. A man condemned to die ministering to others in the same position. His faith would also become the center of several legal battles in his final years, Battles over religious rights that he fought and largely lost.
His request surrounding the execution all rooted in Islamic practice were largely dismissed by the prison. This was not new territory for Holman. The facility had a documented pattern of denying religious accommodation requests from Muslim prisoners. One request, however, was honored. Gavin asked that no autopsy be performed on his body after death.
Under Islamic belief, the body must remain intact. The state agreed. It was one of the few things he asked for that he actually received. While Gavin sat on death row, his legal team continued to fight his case, not over his guilt, but over the fairness of his sentencing. The central argument was this.
His lawyers at trial had been deeply, fundamentally unprepared. During the penalty phase, the phase where the jury decides whether someone lives or dies, Gavin’s defense called only two witnesses. One was his mother. The other was a minister who had never met Gavin before his arrest. Defense counsel had spoken with that minister for just 5 minutes before putting him on the stand.
And during that testimony, the lawyer got the minister’s name wrong in front of the jury. The jury deliberated for 75 minutes. A trial court later found that Gavin’s lawyers had failed to present a single mitigating circumstance. Not one factor that might have persuaded even one more juror to choose life over death. In 2020, a federal district court agreed.
It ruled that Gavin had received constitutionally ineffective counsel and that the Constitution required a new sentencing trial. But that ruling did not hold. A federal appellate court reversed the decision, concluding that even with better representation, the outcome at sentencing would not have changed. The road to appeal narrowed.
Options closed off one by one. By the summer of 2024, Keith Gavin had exhausted nearly every legal avenue available to him. July 18th, 2024. The date was set. That morning, he refused breakfast. He ate lunch. A few snacks later in the afternoon. When the time came for his final meal, the last request offered to every condemned person, he declined. No special order.
No last indulgence. He simply didn’t ask for anything. With approximately 30 minutes remaining before the scheduled execution, his attorneys filed a final handwritten appeal directly to the United States Supreme Court. The justices considered it, and they rejected it. The execution moved forward.
In the death chamber at Holman Correctional Facility, media witnesses and officials gathered as required by law. Keith Gavin was 64 years old. He had spent more than a third of his entire life on that death row unit. He had watched other men be escorted from the same corridor to the same room. And now it was his turn. Before the procedure began, he spoke.
“I love my family.” Those were his words in English. What followed, witnesses said, sounded Arabic, a prayer offered quietly before the end. The lethal injection began at 6:32 in the evening. After a procedure that lasted 23 minutes, Keith Edmund Gavin was pronounced dead. Keith Edmund Gavin was executed on July 18th, 2024 at the age of 64 after spending 25 years on Alabama’s death row for the 1998 m*rder of William Clinton Clayton Jr.
A crime committed just months after Gavin was released on parole following a prior m*rder conviction in Illinois. He was the second person executed in Alabama that year. His final words were a declaration of love for his family. His final act was a prayer. Whether justice was fully served, partially served, or imperfectly served, this case will leave that question open for a long time.
If you made it to the end of this video, thank you for watching. These are not easy stories to tell or to sit through. If you want to see more cases covered in the same way, consider subscribing. And if there is a case you want covered, drop it in the comments below.
