Alabama Supreme Court approves execution of Jamie Ray Mills
Jamie Mills was sentenced to death for the 2004 murders of Fred and Vera Hill. (Alabama Department of Corrections)
The Alabama Supreme Court Wednesday approved the execution of a death row inmate for the 2004 murder of a Marion couple.
The justices unanimously granted the motion filed by the Alabama Attorney General’s Office in January authorizing the Alabama Department of Corrections to execute Jamie Ray Mills.
A jury convicted Mills, 50, in 2007 of the murder of Floyd and Vera Hill in Guin. According to court records, Mills and his common-law wife entered the Hills’ residence on the pretext of making a call. Mills then beat the couple with a hammer and robbed their home.
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Mills was sentenced to death by the jury by a vote of 11-1. His appeals to state and federal courts were all denied.
“There is no doubt that Mills committed those offenses,” the Alabama attorney general’s office wrote in a Jan. 29 motion to set an execution date. “As set out more fully below, Mills’s convictions and sentence are final because he has completed his direct appeal, state post-conviction review, and federal habeas review. Accordingly, it is time for this death sentence to be carried out.”
The order allows Gov. Kay Ivey to set a date for Mills to be put to death within 30 days. Ivey’s office had not announced an execution date as of Thursday evening.
Mills would be the first execution since Kenneth Eugene Smith was put to death on Jan. 25, using a novel method of nitrogen hypoxia. Media witnesses said that Smith gasped and convulsed during the execution.
The Alabama Department of Corrections has had trouble recently with carrying out executions using lethal injections. DOC conducted three botched executions in 2022 that led to Ivey ordering a brief moratorium on executions to allow a review.
Several months later Ivey ended the moratorium after receiving a letter from DOC Commissioner John Hamm, explaining that the state had changed the protocol and addressed the problems. DOC did not release any information on how it had done so.
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