Keith Gavin is scheduled to be executed in Alabama on July 18, 2024. He was convicted in 1999 of a murder committed in 1998 and sentenced to death on a jury vote of 10-2 for the death penalty. In 2020, a federal judge found that his legal representation at the sentencing phase had been constitutionally inadequate, but in 2022 the Court of Appeals reversed this decision. International legal standards require that anyone facing the death penalty be provided effective legal assistance at all stages of the case. This standard was not met. We urge the Governor to commute this death sentence.
PLEASE TAKE ACTION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE UNTIL: July 18, 2024
take action:
- Write a letter in your own words or using the sample below as a guide to one or both government officials listed. You can also email, fax, call or Tweet them.
- Click here to let us know the actions you took on Urgent Action 61.24. It’s important to report because we share the total number with the officials we are trying to persuade and the people we are trying to help.
contact information:
The Office of Governor Kay Ivey
State Capitol
600 Dexter Avenue
Montgomery, AL 36130, USA
Email: https://contact.governor.alabama.gov/contact.aspx
Fax: +1 334 353 0004
sample letter:
Dear Governor Ivey,
Keith Gavin is scheduled to be executed on July 18, 2024. I am appealing for your intervention to stop the execution.
I urge you to consider how little mitigation evidence was presented to the jury for their life-or-death decision-making at the sentencing phase of Keith Gavin’s trial in 1999. Yet there was much evidence available about his formative years in the public housing projects of Chicago, and his exposure to violence in the home and outside it. The jury heard none of this humanizing and mitigating evidence because the defense lawyers simply failed to investigate and present it.
International human rights standards require that anyone facing the death penalty be provided with effective legal assistance at all stages of the proceedings and that this should go “above and beyond the protections afforded in non-capital cases”. I submit that this standard was not met here.
I urge you to grant clemency and to commute Keith Gavin’s death sentence.
Yours sincerely,
[YOUR NAME]
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