Death row inmate Keith Edmund Gavin asks court to block autopsy

A man scheduled to die by lethal injection has asked a court to overrule state laws due to his faith.

A death-row inmate in the US is challenging laws requiring an autopsy after executions, with his lawyers saying it goes against his faith.

Convicted murderer Keith Edmund Gavin is due to be executed in the state of Alabama for the 1998 shooting of delivery driver William Clinton Clayton Jr.

Gavin, a devout Muslim, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on July 18 but has filed a lawsuit asking a court to block a post-mortem being conducted on his body.

“His religion teaches that the human body is a sacred temple, which must be kept whole,” his lawyers wrote, according to The Associated Press.

Keith Edmund Gavin is awaiting execution for murder. Picture: Supplied

“As a result, Mr Gavin sincerely believes that an autopsy would desecrate his body and violate the sanctity of keeping his human body intact.

“Based on his faith, Mr. Gavin is fiercely opposed to an autopsy being performed on his body after his execution.”

AP reports a spokesman for the Alabama Attorney-General Steve Marshall said authorities “we are working on a resolution” to Gavin’s request.

Now 64, Gavin was convicted of capital murder for the slaying of Mr Clayton in Cherokee County, northeast Alabama.

Mr Clayton had planned to take his wife for dinner when he stopped at an ATM to get money, prosecutors said at Gavin’s trial.

He was then shot and robbed as he sat in the front seat of his van.

Capital punishment is used in 24 states. Picture: Paul Buck/AFP

Gavin was convicted of two counts of capital murder, with prosecutors also charging him with the unrelated shooting of two police officers in the years prior to Mr Clayton’s death.

A jury voted in favour of the death penalty for Gavin 10 to two.

The death penalty remains in 27 US states, although three states have a moratorium on the punishment.

It is not practised in 23 states, including New York.

There have been nine prisoners executed in the country this year across five states, with one carried out using the controversial and experimental method “nitrogen hypoxia” – which was used in Alabama.

Kenneth Eugene Smith was executed via nitrogen hypoxia. AFP Photo/ Alabama Department of Corrections

He murdered Elizabeth Sennett.

It involves putting a gas mask on the inmate and forcing them to breathe pure nitrogen, depriving them of the oxygen needed to maintain bodily functions, causing them to die.

Inmates executed in this way were meant to lose consciousness and die quickly, but eyewitnesses to the death of Kenneth Eugene Smith spoke of the “horror” they saw.

Smith’s spiritual adviser Jeff Hood described in vivid detail the suffering he witnessed in a column for USA Today.

“Anyone who claims that this was anything short of torture is not just mistaken, they are a dangerous liar,” he wrote.