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MEDIA PACKAGE

As the U.S. Supreme Court weighs whether to allow the State of Alabama to execute Jeffery Lee tonight using an experimental nitrogen gas method, which two federal courts have already ruled unconstitutionally cruel, we are releasing the following media package.

Below you will find urgent statements from Jeffery Lee's legal team and best-selling author and justice advocate John Grisham, along with the first public release of Jeffery Lee's clemency film, Life for Jeffery Lee, revealing the human being at the center of this constitutional crisis…and more.

STATEMENT FROM JEFFERY LEE’S LEGAL TEAM

A jury voted for life. Two federal courts ruled this execution method unconstitutional. Attorney General Steve Marshall's response is to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and push forward anyway. When a jury says life and the courts say the method is cruel and unusual, the answer is not to find a way around them. This execution is too flawed to move forward. Governor Ivey should intervene.
STATEMENT FROM AUTHOR JOHN GRISHAM

Twenty-six years ago, Alabama jurors heard evidence in Jeffery Lee's case and voted for life without parole. His judge overrode the jury and ordered Jeffery Lee put to death. The practice of a judge overriding a jury was declared unconstitutional and so indefensible that Alabama itself abolished it in 2017.
A fair trial means the jury's verdict counts, it’s what the Sixth Amendment requires. Jeffery Lee’s jury made its decision, the Alabama Legislature later agreed that juries, not judges, should decide life or death sentences. Governor Ivey can honor the jury, the Legislature, and justice by commuting Jeffery Lee’s sentence to life without parole.
THE FILMED EVIDENCE: Who Alabama is Trying to Kill Tonight

When the State prepares to execute a human being, it tries to make him invisible. We refuse to let Alabama hide Jeffery Lee. Today, for the first time, we are making the film Life of Jeffery Lee public.
Watch it. Because this is who the State of Alabama is trying to kill.
Right now, the State of Alabama is begging the U.S. Supreme Court for permission to consciously suffocate Mr. Lee tonight, demanding they overturn two federal court rulings that found Alabama's gas method unconstitutionally cruel. His jury voted for life. The State is pressing forward anyway.
The State of Alabama wants you to see a case number and a death warrant. We want to show you the man.
(Watch the film below.)

Accountability comes first

Jeffery Lee is responsible for taking lives. Nothing in his past erases that harm. The victims are not abstractions, and their loss is real and permanent.

Jeffery does not dispute the facts of the crime, nor does he ask for forgiveness without accountability. Accountability matters. Justice matters. The pain experienced by the victims and their loved ones matters.

Justice also requires context. It requires truth. And it requires that punishment reflect both the crime and the person who committed it, including whether that person is capable of remorse, rehabilitation, and change.

The question before us is not whether the crime was serious; we know it was.
The question is whether death is the only just response when a jury, after hearing only some of the mitigating factors – the context – chose life without parole.

“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.”

— Sister Helen Prejean, Author of Dead Man Walking

A Message from Jeffery Lee

Jurors speak out

Mr. Lee’s jury voted 7-5 for life without parole. They didn’t know that a judge could take the power of their verdict away. Jurors talk about what it meant to have their power taken from them.