Execution date scheduled for Dallas County man Thursday

Published 1:43 pm Wednesday, January 26, 2022

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A Dallas County man convicted of a 1996 murder is scheduled to get executed Thursday night in Atmore.

The Alabama Department of Corrections scheduled the execution date for Matthew Reeves 6 p.m. on Thursday at Holman Prison in Atmore.

Reeves was convicted of killing Willie Johnson with a shotgun inside a pickup truck during a robbery in November, 1996. He was convicted two years after the killing in 1998. His younger brother Julius, 16; and Brenda Suttles, 19, were involved with the murder and robbery of 38-year-old Willie Johnson.

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Reeves was arrested several hours after the crime and was later convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.

In 2021, Reeves’ lawyers argued to the U.S. Supreme Court that that his trial counsel should have done more to try to show he is intellectually disabled and therefore he should be spared a death sentence.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Reeves in a 6-3 opinion. It was under the advisement of a state expert during trial that Reeves was not intellectually disabled. Court documents show that Reeves had a leadership role in a drug-dealing group and earned as much as $2,000 a week