Alabama Department of Corrections officials announced this week that death row inmate Doyle Lee Hamm has been scheduled for execution at 6 p.m. next Thursday, Feb. 22, at William C. Holman Correctional Facility near Atmore. The Alabama Supreme Court ordered this week that the execution be carried out.
Hamm, 60, was convicted in 1987 of murdering a Cullman hotel clerk during a robbery that — according to court documents — netted him and two accomplices $410.Hamm, who was a resident of Mississippi at the time of the slaying, reportedly confessed to the murder, and his two partners in crime testified against him in exchange for being allowed to plead guilty to lesser offenses.
The condemned killer’s lawyer said in a press release that Hamm is terminally ill, that he has been battling cranial and lymphatic cancer for over three years. Treatment for the illness has compromised his veins, and lethal injection would likely cause “cruel and needless pain,” according to papers filed by his attorneys.