After nearly 30 years on death row, Casey McWhorter died by lethal injection Nov. 16 for the 1993 robbery and murder of Edward Lee Williams of Marshall County.
“Despite the fact that Mr. McWhorter managed to delay his date with justice for over three decades, his guilt of Mr. Williams’ premeditated robbery and murder was never in question,” Gov. Kay Ivey said. “In Alabama, we uphold the rule of law and hold accountable those who take the lives of others. Casey McWhorter has finally paid for his heinous crime.”
McWhorter was 18 years old when he and his 16-year-old friend robbed and killed Williams in his home. Williams’s son, who was 15 years old at the time, also conspired with the two to rob and kill Williams.
When Williams arrived home and saw the teens in his home, he struggled over a gun with one of the teens, and court records indicate McWhorter fired the first shot into Williams’s body, which sustained 11 gunshot wounds.
Attorney General Steve Marshall said he hoped that Williams’s family has found peace and closure.
“Justice is the value we place on the life that was wronged. I regret that Mr. Williams’s family had to wait for over three decades for this finality,” Marshall said. “Most of us will never understand the agony that families like the Williamses faced, waiting to see if the justice system really is just.”
Marshall informed the Alabama Department of Corrections shortly after 3 p.m. Nov. 16 that there were no remaining legal challenges to the execution of the sentence.
According to ADOC, WcWhorter had six visitors and seven phone calls the day before his execution, and three visitors and three phone calls the day of.
McWhorter refused his breakfast and lunch the day of his execution and his final meal was Turtles candy, according to ADOC.
The Associated Press reports that prison officials opened the curtain to the execution chamber at 6:30 p.m. McWhorter, who was strapped to the gurney with the intravenous lines already attached, moved slightly at the beginning of the procedure, rubbing his fingers together, but his breathing slowed until it was no longer visible.
“I would like to say I love my mother and family,” McWhorter said in his final words. “I would like to say to the victim’s family I’m sorry. I hope you find peace.”
McWhorter was pronounced dead at 6:56 p.m. by lethal injection at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. He was the second inmate executed in Alabama this year after three botched lethal injections last year, two of which were subsequently halted. Executions were paused for eight months as the state revised and updated its protocol.
During a press conference following the execution, ADOC Commissioner John Hamm read a letter written by Williams’s daughter April. His brother also made a statement.
April Williams said her father should be spending time with his grandchildren and enjoying retirement.
“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about him and how I miss him,” April Williams said in the letter, according to the Associated Press. “Casey McWhorter had several hours in that house to change his mind from taking the life of my dad.”
During an interview with CNHI two weeks before his execution, McWhorter admited to falling in with the wrong crowd due to family issues, and a desire for a relationship with his father.
“He kind of kept me at arm’s length growing up and that’s where a lot of my abandonment issues and twisted thoughts came from as far as I wasn’t loved or I didn’t fit in,” McWhorter said. “It was completely misconstrued through the eyes and mind of a child.”
Several groups protested McWhorter’s execution, arguing that McWhorter was denied youthful offender treatment. McWhorter had just turned 18 three months before the crime occurred. He was also sentenced to death by a jury decision that was not unanimous, a 10-2 jury vote.
On Jan. 25, 2024, Kenneth Eugene Smith is set to be the first Alabama inmate executed by nitrogen gas.
Smith — who was sentenced to death by a judge in 1996 after being convicted of killing a woman in a murder-for-hire scheme in 1988 — was set to be executed Nov. 17, 2022, but after ADOC staff spent an hour trying to set IV lines for the lethal injection drugs, his execution was halted.