Alabama: Matthew Reeves executed – stay overruled by Supreme Court
After a delay of just over three hours, 44-year-old Matthew Reeves was executed by lethal injection Thursday night.
He was sentenced to death for shooting a man with a shotgun in a van during a robbery in 1996.
An Alabama judge had halted the execution about three weeks ago. They had not offered Reeves, who has an IQ between 60 and 70, the mandatory help in filling out a form where he could have chosen his method of execution.
Since 2018, Alabama has provided for asphyxiation by nitrogen as an alternative method of execution. Fellow inmates who have chosen the alternative method have not yet received an execution date because Alabama is not yet prepared for nitrogen hypoxia.
The U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 to lift the stay, clearing the way for the death sentence to be carried out.