Jeffrey Lee, 49, is due to be executed in Alabama on 17 September for the 1998 murders of Elvis impersonator Jimmy Ellis and his ex-wife Elaine Thompson, and has now made a last-minute appeal for clemency. The case highlights ongoing controversy in Alabama over judicial override, a now-abolished practice that allowed judges to overturn jury sentencing decisions, which is how Lee ended up on death row despite jurors originally recommending life without parole.

Lee was convicted in 2000 of shooting Ellis and Thompson during a robbery at their pawn shop, an attack caught on surveillance footage, and has spent 26 years at Holman Correctional Facility. A judge overruled the jury's life sentence and imposed the death penalty, a practice Alabama abolished in 2017, though not retroactively, leaving Lee among 25 inmates still condemned under the old system. He has switched execution methods after nitrogen gas was ruled unconstitutional, and is now asking Governor Kay Ivey to commute his sentence to life without parole, citing remorse and a troubled upbringing.