The state of Alabama carried out the execution of a death row inmate convicted of murdering an elderly couple in Marion County in 2004 with a ball-peen hammer, tire tool and machete to net the robbery of items worth $140.

Jamie Ray Mills was pronounced dead at 6:26 p.m. May 30 by lethal injection at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.

A press conference was held following the execution with remarks from Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Q. Hamm who read a statement provided by the victims' family.

Floyd, 87, and Vera, 72, Hill lived in Guin in June 2004. Vera was diabetic and needed several medications, which Floyd kept in a locked table box in the kitchen, according to the case in a press release from Attorney General Steve Marshall. The Hills also held yard sales and Floyd was known to carry large sums of money with him. He frequented the local Amoco gas station, where Mills has last worked, though he was unemployed at the time.

Mills and his common-law wife "stayed up all night smoking methamphetamine" on June 23 before going to buy cigarettes the next afternoon and heading to the Hills' home with intent to rob them.

Floyd knew Mills and let him the two inside. Mills attacked the elderly couple in their shed before locking it and stealing the tackle box with Vera's pills, her purse, Floyd's wallet, a phone and a police scanner — all worth $140, according to the attorney general's office.

The Hills' granddaughter drove to their house and called the police for a welfare check when she was unable to reach them that evening. When an officer broke into the locked shed, Floyd was dead but Vera was still alive. She was taken to the hospital and treated for head trauma and depressed skull fracture, facial fractures, a broken neck and crushed hands. She was sent home bedridden with a feeding tube and could not answer questions. She died of complications from her head trauma on Sept. 12, 2004.

After matching a vehicle seen by the Hills' next-door neighbor to Mills, police found the stolen items and bloody clothes, items and the weapons at his nearby house.

The day before his execution, Mills had six visitors and six phone calls, according to the Alabama Department of Corrections. On May 30, he had six visitors and no phone calls. He ate a final meal of seafood.

Mills was the first inmate put to death in Alabama since the state became the first in the nation to execute someone using nitrogen gas in January. Lethal injection is the state's default method of execution unless the inmate requests either nitrogen gas or the electric chair.