Alabama executes Matthew Reeves; no final words before lethal injection

Matthew Reeves offered no final words and only few movements as his 
execution was carried out Thursday evening at Holman Prison in Atmore.

Reeves was pronounced dead around 9:24 p.m., according to Commissioner 
John Hamm. His execution began around 9:03 p.m., after a stay was lifted 
at 7:25 p.m. from the nation’s highest court.

Reeves had no final words, no final meal and no spiritual advisor present 
for his execution, which took place despite claims that he was 
intellectually disabled.

As the execution began, Reeves grimaced and rose his head slightly to look 
at the IV in his arm, before he laid his head back down. Around 9:09 p.m., 
he closed his eyes, though his abdomen continued moving.

Shortly after that time, a prison official performed a consciousness test 
which consisted of a hand wave over his face and an arm pinch.

Before 9:15 p.m., Reeves stopped moving.

After Reeves was pronounced dead, Hamm read a statement from the family of 
Willie Johnson to gathered media witnesses.

“After 26 years, justice has finally been served,” Hamm read from the 
family’s statement. “Our family can now have some closure.”

Reeves was executed for the murder of Willie Johnson, a man who picked up 
Reeves and other individuals on the side of the highway in Selma in 
November of 1996.

Johnson was later killed by a shotgun blast to the neck after being robbed 
of $360, according to case evidence.

At a party shortly after Johnson’s death, evidence showed that Reeves, who 
was 18 at the time, danced and mimicked his death with his blood still on 
his hands. A witness added that Reeves bragged about getting a “teardrop” 
tattoo to signify that he’d killed someone at the party.

Reeves’ intellectual disability was at the center of his case in the years 
since the murder and the reason why initially, his execution was stayed.

The execution was put on hold last week by a federal judge in Alabama, a 
decision upheld this week by the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. But 
the state, represented by the Alabama Attorney General’s Office, appealed 
that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, who ultimately struck 
it down.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted she would deny the state’s petition, while 
Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Stephen Breyer 
dissented in the case.

“This Court should have left the matter there, rather than enable Reeves’s 
execution by lethal injection to go forward,” wrote Kagan.

“Four judges on two courts have decided—after extensive record 
development, briefing, and argument—that Matthew Reeves’s execution should 
not proceed as scheduled tonight. The law demands that we give their 
conclusions deference... But the Court today disregards the well-supported 
findings made below, consigning Reeves to a method of execution he would 
not have chosen if properly,” Kagan wrote.

Reeves has cognitive limitations and has the same reading ability as an 
elementary-school child, Kagan added, citing one expert who testified that 
Reeves’s “reading comprehension was at the 1st grade level.”

After news that the AG’s Office had appealed to SCOTUS, attorneys for 
Reeves filed a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in response.

“The application [by the State of Alabama] barely acknowledges the Court 
of Appeals’ opinion and is little more than a restatement of the issues 
already raised and rejected by each court to have considered them,” 
Reeves’ lawyers wrote in the brief.

Reeves’ lawyers argued he was not competent enough to follow the paperwork 
handed out to death row inmates in 2018 that allowed them to change their 
execution method. Reeves’ intellectual disability should disqualify him 
from being executed, the attorneys argued, as the state did not allow him 
to choose an untried and less “torturous” method of execution.

That new method of execution mentioned by the attorneys is nitrogen 
hypoxia, which was approved in 2018 by legislators. Inmates of Alabama’s 
death row had a chance to sign a form stating which method they would 
prefer that same year, but Reeves’ lawyers argued he was not allowed able 
to do so as an intellectually disabled poor reader.

His lawyers added that assistance should’ve been provided under the 
Americans With Disabilities Act.

Reeves’ execution it was the second one of the day - and this year - in 
the U.S., after the state of Oklahoma executed Donald Grant around 10 a.m. 
Thursday morning.

https://www.al.com/news/2022/01/matthew-reeves-execution-tonights-
execution-on-hold-while-us-supreme-court-decides-fate.html