The governor has set a time frame for the next execution in Alabama, this time to be carried out by the previously used method of lethal injection.
Gov. Kay Ivey announced that Jamie Ray Mills will be put to death sometime between 12:00 a.m. on Thursday, May 30, and Friday, May 31. The lethal injection will happen at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. The south Alabama prison houses the state’s only execution chamber.
Mills, 50, was convicted of three counts of capital murder for the June 2004 killings of Floyd Hill and Vera Hill.
The north Alabama couple was beaten to death by Mills, according to court records. Mills and his wife then robbed the Hill’s home.
Vera Hill, 72, was in poor health. Her husband of 55 years, Floyd Hill, was 87 years old and her caretaker.
Ivey’s announcement comes after a change in the way Alabama sets execution dates. Prior to January 2023, the Alabama Supreme Court issued a death warrant, good for one 24-hour period. Now, the Alabama governor sets a time frame for the execution. The change allows the Alabama Department of Corrections more time to carry out executions, after a slew of lethal injections had to be called off because they couldn’t be completed before midnight on their respective dates.
Jamie Mills was convicted and sentenced to death by a jury vote of 11-1.
The lethal injection comes after Alabama conducted the country’s first execution using nitrogen gas earlier this year. Kenneth Eugene Smith died January 25 by inhaling pure nitrogen through a gas mask, while the state faced national scrutiny for using the untested method.
After nitrogen gas was approved as a method of execution, death row prisoners were given an opportunity to choose that method over lethal injection but Mills did not opt in.