The Case > Introduction
What Happened
On December 12, 1998, Jeffery Lee entered Jimmy's Pawn Shop in Dallas County, Alabama, armed with a sawed-off shotgun. During an armed robbery, he shot three people. Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson died from their injuries. Helen King survived.
Jeffery confessed to these crimes shortly after his arrest. For more than 25 years, he has taken full responsibility for his actions and the irreparable harm they caused.
The Case > The Case Timeline
The Legal Process
1998 — Jeffery was arrested and gave a full confession.
2000 — At trial in Dallas County, the jury heard all evidence and deliberated on sentencing. They voted 7–5 to recommend Life Without Parole.
2000 — Despite the jury's recommendation, the trial judge used Alabama's judicial override power to impose a death sentence.
2004–2017 — Jeffery's appeals raised substantial issues, including inadequate consideration of mental health evidence and the constitutionality of Alabama's override system.
2017 — The Alabama Legislature passed Senate Bill 16, abolishing judicial override. Governor Kay Ivey signed it into law, recognizing that judges should not have the power to overrule jury sentencing recommendations in capital cases.
Where We Are Now
Jeffery has exhausted his standard appeals. His fate now rests entirely with Alabama's executive branch.
Because the 2017 law was not applied retroactively, Jeffery remains on death row despite his jury's recommendation for life, one of approximately 30 people in Alabama sentenced under a system the state itself has since abolished as unjust.
The Case > Charges & Sentence
Understanding the Charges and Sentence
Jeffery Lee was convicted of two counts of capital murder during the course of a robbery. Under Alabama law, this made him eligible for either life in prison without the possibility of parole or the death penalty.
The jury, twelve citizens from Dallas County, voted on what sentence he should receive. Seven jurors believed he should spend the rest of his life in prison. Five jurors believed he should be sentenced to death.
Under the law at the time, that 7–5 vote was only a recommendation. The final decision belonged to the trial judge, who chose to impose death despite the jury's vote for life.
Jeffery has now been on Alabama's death row for over two decades under a sentence imposed by judicial override, a practice Alabama abolished in 2017.
The Case > Appellate Posture
The Appeals Process
After sentencing, Jeffery's case went through multiple levels of review in both state and federal courts. His legal team raised significant issues, including:
Whether his trial attorneys adequately investigated and presented evidence of mental health conditions and childhood trauma that might have influenced the jury's sentencing decision
Whether Alabama's judicial override system, which allowed a judge to overrule a jury's sentencing recommendation, violated constitutional protections
The courts ultimately denied relief, and Jeffery has now exhausted his standard appeals. Under Alabama law, there are no further automatic reviews.
His only remaining path is clemency, a power held by Alabama's governor to grant mercy when the legal system, even operating within its rules, has produced an unjust result.
Jeffery’s Life > Introduction
Jeffery Lee's life did not begin on December 12, 1998. Understanding the sentence a jury was asked to impose requires understanding the conditions that shaped his early years, and the catastrophic injuries that altered his brain in the months before the crime.
Jeffery’s Life > How These Factors Compound
Understanding How These Factors Compound
Understanding this history does not excuse what he did. But it is essential to understanding who he was, how his life fractured long before the crime occurred, and how a person shaped by violence, injury, and addiction can spiral into catastrophic decisions.
When childhood trauma disrupts brain development, when substance abuse begins at age eight, when untreated head injuries go undiagnosed and unmanaged, these factors do not simply add up. They multiply. Each one makes the others worse. Each one narrows the possibility of a different outcome.
Jeffery’s Life > Childhood Abuse and Poverty
When Home Is Not Safe
Jeffery did not grow up in a safe or stable home. He and his siblings pulled toys and even candy out of the local dump. His home did not have electricity or indoor plumbing into the 1980s and '90s.
As a child, he endured severe physical abuse at the hands of his father. His family lived in constant fear. Violence was not an isolated incident; it was a pattern. Jeffery often placed himself between his father and his mother during brutal assaults, trying to protect her from harm.
This was the environment in which Jeffery's brain, judgment, and sense of safety developed: one defined by terror, instability, and survival.
Jeffery’s Life > Why This Matters
Seven jurors heard only a portion of this story. They were never presented with the full picture of compounding trauma, brain damage, and untreated illness that defined Jeffery's life.
And even with an incomplete understanding, they chose life without parole.
Jeffery’s Life > Early Substance Use
Substance Use Began in Childhood
As a way of coping with the horrors of his home life, Jeffery began abusing substances at the alarmingly young age of eight years old.
He regularly inhaled gasoline, falling into brief reprieves from reality as a result of flooding his body and brain with toxic fumes. Huffing gasoline became Jeffery's regular practice for years, a practice that became so intense his father could smell the fumes on him, and yet no adult intervened.
By the time he was 11, the headaches from huffing gasoline became so unbearable that he needed a different escape, so he turned to alcohol to numb his senses and dull the pain of his reality. What started as a means of escape from fear and pain became its own destructive force.
By the time of the crime, substance abuse compounded the effects of trauma and brain injury.
Jeffery’s Life > TBI and Lack of Treatment
The Accident That Sealed His Fate
As a young man, Jeffery was involved in a serious crash when his car was hit by a tractor trailer, resulting in a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Following the accident, he experienced severe headaches and significant mood changes, symptoms commonly associated with neurological trauma.
Brain injuries, especially when untreated, can affect impulse control, emotional regulation, judgment, and risk assessment. When layered onto an already violent upbringing and years of inhalant abuse, the effects can be profound.
Jeffery did not receive the kind of comprehensive medical care or neurological evaluation that such an injury demands. He was left to cope on his own as his symptoms grew in the weeks and months following the accident. Debilitating headaches, severe sensitivity to light and sound, and unpredictable mood swings caused Jeffery to become more isolated and withdrawn, and to seek stronger substances to escape the reality of his daily life.
The Jury and Override > Introduction
In Jeffery Lee's case, a jury chose the penalty of life without parole. This page explains how that decision was overridden under a system that allowed judges to replace jury sentencing verdicts with their own, and why that matters.
The Jury and Override > What the Judge Considered That the Jury Did Not
In reaching his decision to override the jury's life verdict, the trial judge was permitted to consider information outside the jury's presence, including a presentence investigation report the jury never reviewed.
Court records also reflect that while some mitigating evidence about Jeffery's background was presented during the sentencing phase, significant additional mitigation existed that was never placed before the jury: evidence of childhood trauma, untreated brain injury, and the compounding effects of mental illness and substance abuse.
Even without the full picture, seven jurors still chose life.
The Jury and Override > How Capital Sentencing Worked in Alabama
In a capital murder trial, the process happens in two phases: the guilt phase and the sentencing phase.
During the guilt phase, the jury decides whether the defendant committed the crime. In Jeffery's case, the jury found him guilty of capital murder.
During the sentencing phase, the same jury hears additional evidence, including mitigating factors about the defendant's life, mental health, and circumstances, and decides what the punishment should be: life in prison without the possibility of parole, or death.
In most states, the jury's sentencing decision is final and binding. The judge carries out whatever sentence the jury chooses.
But in Alabama in 2000, the jury's sentencing verdict was only advisory. The final decision belonged to the judge. Under a practice called judicial override, the judge could reject the jury's recommendation entirely and impose a different sentence.
This meant that even if a jury voted for life, a judge could override that decision and impose death instead.
The Jury and Override > Alabama Abolished the Practice
In 2017, the Alabama Legislature passed Senate Bill 16, abolishing judicial override in capital cases. Governor Kay Ivey signed it into law, stating that sentencing decisions in death penalty cases belong in the hands of juries, not judges.
The legislature recognized what legal experts had been saying for years: allowing a single elected official to override the collective judgment of twelve citizens was unjust, arbitrary, and incompatible with the principles of a fair trial.
If Jeffery Lee were sentenced today under Alabama law, his life would be spared by statute. The jury's 7–5 vote for life without parole would stand.
But the 2017 law was not made retroactive. It did not apply to people who had already been sentenced under the override system.
The Jury and Override > The Jury’s Verdict
After hearing the evidence presented at trial, the jury in Jeffery Lee's case deliberated on his sentence. Twelve citizens from Dallas County were given the heaviest responsibility our legal system asks of anyone: deciding whether a person should live or die.
By a vote of 7–5, they chose life without the possibility of parole.
Seven jurors concluded that Jeffery should spend the rest of his life in prison, but that execution was not warranted. This was not a close call requiring a tie-breaker. It was a clear majority.
In almost every other state in America, that decision would have been final.
In Alabama in 2000, it was only a recommendation.
The Jury and Override > How Many People Remain on Death Row Because of Override
Approximately 30 people remain on Alabama's death row today despite jury recommendations for life. Jeffery Lee is one of them.
The state continues to seek the execution of individuals whose juries, the only people to sit through the entire trial, hear all the evidence, and weigh the circumstances, explicitly voted for them to live.
The Jury and Override > What Judicial Override Allowed
Alabama law at the time permitted trial judges to override jury sentencing verdicts in capital cases. A judge could impose death even when a jury voted for life or impose life even when a jury voted for death.
Alabama was the only state in the nation that allowed this practice.
The system was widely criticized. Judges in Alabama are elected officials, and many legal scholars pointed to the troubling incentive structure: judges facing reelection campaigns could override juries to appear tough on crime. Between 1976 and 2017, Alabama judges overrode jury verdicts to impose death in at least 112 cases.
Jeffery Lee's case was one of them.
The Jury and Override > The Moral Hinge
This is not a technical question about retroactivity or legislative intent.
Alabama ended judicial override because it recognized the practice was wrong. The question now is whether we will allow that wrongness to stand simply because it occurred before a certain date, or whether we will correct it through the one mechanism still available: executive clemency.
A jury chose life. The state later agreed that juries, not judges, should make that choice. The only person now empowered to restore what the jury decided is the Governor.
Redemption and Remorse > 26 Years Behind Bars
Twenty-Six Years Behind Bars
Jeffery has spent the last 26 years, nearly half his life, on Alabama's death row at Holman Correctional Facility.
During that time, his prison record shows zero violent infractions. No assaults. No fights. No disciplinary actions for aggression or threats.
This is not a short period of good behavior. This is more than a quarter-century of consistent conduct that stands in stark contrast to the violence that brought him there.
Redemption and Remorse > The Ripple Effect
The transformation Jeffery has undergone doesn't just affect him. It affects everyone around him.
General Fisher reflects on this broader impact: "I cannot help but think about his victims... but I also think about what he's giving back and what he's offering to not just the prisoners there, but to the staff members that meet him every day. I can't imagine how many of them go home at night to maybe some problems they have and then they end up telling their spouse, 'Can you believe it? We're sitting here talking about our challenges. Look at what he's doing in the prison today and this is what he told me and this is how he uplifted me.'"
David Smith adds: "Everything he is doing is making a difference in the lives of those around him as well as the officers... It doesn't just affect the inmates. It's the whole institution."
Redemption and Remorse > Carrying the Weight
Jeffery speaks about the victims and their families:
"When this crime happened, I didn't know their names. I wanted to know because in my prayers I wanted to include their names. I didn't know until I was arraigned, and when they put me back in the sheriff's [office] I got on my knees because I knew their names. It won't be a day for the rest of my life that I won't think and pray for those families—pray for the lives that was affected by my actions. I know their names. I pray for the Anderson, King, the Thompson family every day."
Redemption and Remorse > Faith & Service
Jeffery has dedicated much of his time in prison to faith-based study and service. He was selected to serve as a leader in Kairos, a Christian prison ministry program known for its rigorous standards and transformative impact.
David Smith, a Kairos volunteer who has worked with Jeffery for years, explains: "He has done a tremendous transformation. He's disciplined himself, reading the word of God and then implementing it into his own life to where now he's living it. He's living the example of how to do things right. He's a joy and he's filled with peace and he spreads it wherever he goes."
Kairos leaders don't select just anyone for leadership roles. As Brigadier General Carl Fisher, a Bureau of Prisons chaplain, notes: "People don't pick Kairos leaders unless they're the real deal. Jeffrey must be the kind of individual that somebody thought a lot about and they thought he could be a positive influence."
Redemption and Remorse > A Voice for Change
Sister Helen Prejean, renowned death penalty abolitionist and author of Dead Man Walking, has advocated on Jeffery's behalf. Drawing on her decades of experience with incarcerated individuals, she states:
"One time I was in an execution chamber and a guard said to me, 'You know, the man we're killing tonight is different from that young brash animal that came in here cursing God and everybody. He's changed his life.' And this is definitely true of Jeffery."
Redemption and Remorse > A Mentor to Others
Jeffery has become a source of guidance and stability for younger men on death row, many of whom are struggling with gang affiliations, addiction, and violence.
David Smith has witnessed this firsthand: "He's probably a mentor better than anything else because I hear what all the younger gang bangers and drug addicts... I listen to them and they're always saying, 'Well, he came to me and did this or he came and showed me this and he stopped me from doing this... whenever I was about to go the wrong direction.'"
Chaplain Curtis Browder, a prison minister and advocate who has known Jeffery for years, speaks to the rarity of this kind of change: "Death row is not set up for a man to change. And I know the change when I see the change. He has changed—change of heart, change of mind. He has the love and the warmth and caring spirit about him. I know that personally."
Redemption and Remorse > Why This Matters
The question before the Governor is not whether Jeffery Lee committed a terrible crime. He did.
The question is whether the person he has become over 26 years, a spiritual leader, a mentor, a source of peace in one of the most violent environments in the world, is the same person a jury decided should live rather than die.
Redemption does not erase harm. It does not bring back Jimmy Ellis or Elaine Thompson. But it does demonstrate that people are capable of profound change, accountability, and growth, even in the harshest circumstances.
A jury believed Jeffery Lee deserved the chance to live out that transformation behind bars. The state should honor that judgment.
Redemption and Remorse > What His Family Sees
Jeffery's son, Jeffery Lee Jr., speaks to his father's remorse: "He feels remorse. I think he regrets his decision because I feel like it weighs on him. I feel like that's why he got closer to God, because he wanted to do as much good in the world as he could."
His brother, Andre Lee, reflects on Jeffery's influence on his own life: "The memories that I got of him growing up played a major part in the man I became. It wasn't a reverence of my dad. It's a reverence of my brother. I modeled my life behind the way I seen him trying to grow and I tried to be the person that I think he would have been if he was out here."
Redemption and Remorse > In His Own Words
Jeffery speaks directly about the transformation he has undergone:
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things become new. It kind of challenged me to let the old things in me pass away. Just my way of thinking, my actions, my conduct—getting off drugs, stop drinking, stop cursing. And that has opened up the doors in here for me."
He reflects on who he has become over nearly three decades:
"Jeffrey Lee today is not who he was 28 years ago. I'm more caring, more honest, more open, and I live in a way that honors life. Now, I see life as being sacred. It means everything."
Sign the Letter: Every Signature Counts!
If you haven’t yet, please take a moment to sign and/or share this urgent action petition for Jeffery Lee.
It takes less than one minute and your signature could make the difference.
Join 10,200+ people from around the world in directly asking Governor Kay Ivey to show mercy to Jeffery lee, and commute his death sentence to life in prison, as the State of Alabama already did for the shooter. Every signature counts. Select the link below based on where you live.
Your personal information will never be shared. Every signed letter is delivered directly to decision-makers.
Share Jeffery’s Story
The most powerful way to support this campaign is to ensure Jeffery’s story reaches as many people as possible. Awareness creates the momentum necessary for change. By sharing these posts, you aren't just posting a graphic, you are amplifying the voice of a transformed man and the jury that chose mercy for him.
We have designed these materials to be easily shared across Instagram, Facebook, and X (Twitter). Choose the message that resonates most with you, or share all three over the coming week to help us reach Governor Ivey’s office.
1. The Jury’s Voice
Caption: Did you know that in Alabama, a single judge could once ignore a jury’s vote for life? That’s what happened to Jeffery Lee. Seven jurors voted for Life Without Parole, but the judge overrode them to impose death. Alabama has since banned this practice, yet Jeffery remains on death row. It is time to honor the jury’s voice and end this inconsistency.
Visit [Website Link] to learn how you can ask Governor Ivey for mercy. #MercyForJefferyLee #EndTheOverride #AlabamaJustice
2. A Life Transformed
Caption: Jeffery Lee is not the same person he was 26 years ago. Today, he is an Assistant Chaplain, a barber, and a source of spiritual support for his community. He has taken full responsibility for his past and has spent over two decades atoning for it through service. Execution is not the answer for a life so clearly transformed.
Join us in asking for clemency: [Website Link] #MercyForJefferyLee #Redemption #ClemencyNow
3. The Call to Action
Caption: Justice shouldn't be determined by a calendar. If Jeffery Lee were tried today, his jury's vote for life would be final. Because of a legal loophole, his life is on the line. We are building a movement to ask Governor Ivey to do the right thing. Will you stand with us?
Find the phone script and action steps here: [Website Link] #MercyForJefferyLee #StandForMercy #JusticeReform
Send a personal note to your representative(s).
If you live in Alabama, we need you! Contact your representatives and ask them to urge the Governor to do the right thing and grant Jeffery Lee clemency. You can find each of your representative’s contact information here. Here’s a sample email for you to copy & paste, or to help you get started.
Subject: Respectful Request for Clemency for Jeffery Lee
Dear Governor Ivey,
I am writing to you today as a supporter of justice and fairness to respectfully ask that you grant executive clemency to Jeffery Lee.
In Jeffery’s case, the people of Alabama spoke through his jury. Without hearing all the evidence regarding his traumatic childhood and brain injury, seven out of twelve jurors voted for a sentence of Life Without Parole. Under the Judicial Override system that Alabama has since rightfully abolished, a single judge overrode that collective community voice to impose a death sentence.
Jeffery has spent 26 years in prison becoming a man of peace and a leader in faith. If he were tried today, the jury’s vote for life would be final. I ask that you honor the jury’s original recommendation and commute Jeffery Lee’s sentence to Life Without Parole.
Thank you for your time and for your consideration of this request for mercy.
Sincerely, [Your Name] [Your City, State]
Make a Phone Call in Support of Jeffery Lee.
Make a call to the Governor or to your representatives and let them know you want them to take action on behalf of Jeffery. Here’s a script to help you get started.
"Hello, my name is [Your Name] and I am calling from [City/State]. I am calling to ask Governor Ivey to grant executive clemency to Jeffery Lee. Jeffery has spent 26 years transforming his life, and his original jury recommended a sentence of Life Without Parole. I believe Alabama should honor the jury’s voice and grant Jeffery mercy. Thank you for your time."
The Number: 334-242-7100
Office Hours: Monday – Friday, 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM CST