Alabama to execute man for ’94 killing of fast-food workers in Gadsden
By KIM CHANDLER
Associated Press
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) – Alabama is preparing to execute an inmate for the shooting deaths of three fast food restaurant workers during a 1994 robbery.
Forty-six-year-old Robert Bryant Melson is scheduled to die by lethal injection Thursday evening.
State prosecutors say Melson robbed a Popeye’s restaurant in Gadsden, 60 miles (96 kilometers) northeast of Birmingham. They say Melson ordered the employees into the restaurant’s freezer and opened fire, killing three and wounding another.
Melson’s attorneys asked appellate courts to halt the execution in order to review the constitutionality of Alabama’s lethal injection protocol. Melson and other inmates are appealing a judge’s dismissal of lawsuits that argues Alabama plans to use the sedative midazolam that has been linked to what they say were problematic executions.
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