Atmore, Alabama - A 50-year-old man was executed by lethal injection in Alabama Thursday for the murders of an elderly couple, prison officials said.

Jamie Ray Mills was the sixth person on Death Row executed in the US this year.

Mills was sentenced to death in 2007 for the suspected murders of Floyd Hill (87) and Vera Hill (72) during a robbery. They were killed with a machete, tire iron, and hammer.

His wife, JoAnn Mills, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for her involvement in the 2004 murders and testified against her husband.

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The Alabama Department of Corrections said Mills was executed by lethal injection at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.

He was the second person executed in Alabama this year. In January, Alabama carried out the first-ever execution in the US using nitrogen gas.

There were 24 executions in the US in 2023, all of them carried out by lethal injection.

According to a recent Gallup Poll, 53% of Americans support the death penalty for someone convicted of murder, the lowest level since 1972.

Capital punishment has been abolished in 23 states, while the governors of six others – Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee – have put a hold on its use.