Alabama executes Casey Allen McWhorter

On Thursday night, the Alabama Department of Corrections executed Casey Allen McWhorter at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, for the brutal 1993 slaying of Ed Williams. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said that he regretted that it took so long for the victim’s family to receive justice.

Casey McWhorter was put to death for the brutal murder and robbery of Edward Lee Williams of Marshall County, AG Marshall said. 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. Most of us will never understand the agony that families like the Williams faced, waiting to see if the justice system really is just.

As you might expect, the usual suspects are claiming that this just punishment is cruel and atrocious, Marshall said. i find it contemptible that so-called advocates have neglected to mention the details of Mr. Williams’s murder and the agony that his family has suffered since that terrible day. Edward Williams was shot 11 times, and as he lay on the ground fighting for his life, this murderer shot him in the head to ensure he was dead. In my book, that is cruel and atrocious. I ask the people of Alabama to join me in praying for Edward’s family and friends and that they might at last find peace and closure Attorney General Marshall informed the Alabama Department of Corrections shortly after 3:00 p.m. that there were no remaining legal challenges.

Casey McWhorter’s officially pronounced time of death was 6:56 p.m.

In 1993, Casey McWhorter carried out the plot that he had been conspiring to commit for nearly a month: to rob and murder Ed Williams. Weeks earlier, Lee Williams had asked Casey McWhorter and Daniel Miner to murder his father, Ed Williams.

On Thursday, February 18, 1993, McWhorter and Miner were dropped off near Ed Williams’s house. They waited in the empty house for Williams to return home from work.

McWhorter had manufactured homemade silencers for two .22-caliber rifles. When Ed Williams arrived home, he spotted Miner and grabbed his rifle away. McWhorter then stepped out of the shadows and shot Williams, wounding him. McWhorter’s rifle jammed, so he picked up Miner’s rifle and continued shooting Williams as the wounded man desperately tried to crawl to a bathroom. McWhorter kicked in the bathroom door, picked back up his rifle, unjammed it, and fired a final shot into Williams’s head, ending the man’s lifeMcWhorter confessed to the killing. A mountain of evidence was presented at his trial, and he was convicted of capital murder.