Attorney General Steve Marshall Issues Statement on the Execution of Convicted Murderer Gregory Hunt
(Montgomery, Ala.) – Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall issued the following statement tonight after the execution of Gregory Hunt by nitrogen hypoxia at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama:
“Tonight, we pause to reflect on a long-overdue moment of justice for Karen Sanders Lane and for the family that has carried the weight of her loss for thirty-five years. Karen was a young woman whose life was stolen in the most brutal and dehumanizing way imaginable.
“Gregory Hunt spent more time on death row than Karen spent alive. If he had any real evidence of innocence, he had more than three decades to present it. He did not. What he and his supporters offered instead was a last-minute spectacle aimed at rewriting history and distracting from the truth.
“My team never gave up. Karen deserves more than silence. She deserves to be remembered for who she was, and yet some have made this case about her killer, barely mentioning her name. That is not justice. That is a disgrace.
“Karen Lane was a daughter and a sister. She was a human being. And tonight, we honor her by speaking the truth and by refusing to let it be buried under political theater.”
Tonight’s execution was the fifth time Alabama successfully used nitrogen hypoxia as the method of execution. Many death-row inmates have elected this method since the State made that choice available in 2018. The Department of Corrections first used this humane and effective method in January 2024.
Attorney General Marshall cleared the execution to commence at 5:56 p.m.
Gregory Hunt’s time of death was 6:26 p.m.
Summary of Hunt’s Crimes
Karen Sanders was born on June 5, 1956, to William O. and Betty Jo Sanders in Jasper, Alabama, the second of two daughters. She grew up in Walker County and eventually married A.C. Lane, but the relationship didn’t last. By the summer of 1988, they had separated. Karen had previously lived in a house next door to her parents, but in July, she began spending some nights with her good friend Tina Gilliland, who lived in an apartment in Cordova with her children.
Unfortunately, Karen began dating Tina’s cousin, Gregory Hunt, around that time. A Florida native, Hunt was a newcomer to the area, having moved to live with his mother and stepfather only a few months prior. By then, he’d twice been married and had possibly fathered a child. Karen’s mother did not approve of her daughter’s new boyfriend, and after two weeks, even Tina asked Karen to tell her cousin not to come back to her apartment.
By August 1, Hunt and Karen’s relationship was frayed beyond repair. Over the course of that evening, Hunt expressed his anger with Karen to multiple individuals, chased her through Cordova, and set her house on fire. Early on August 2, he finally broke into Tina’s apartment and beat Karen to death.
The pathologist identified about sixty injuries on Karen’s corpse: some twenty bruises and lacerations to her head, including swollen lips, black eyes, a broken nose, and a broken cheekbone; four bruises on her neck and a broken hyoid bone; bleeding under the scalp and bruises on her brain; and bruises, scrapes, and lacerations on her chest and limbs. Twelve of her ribs were broken on each side, as was her breastbone. Her heart, lungs, and pancreas were bruised, and she had tears in her liver. Karen Lane died from blunt force trauma at the age of thirty-two, her bloodied body left on the kitchen floor with a broomstick “laying in a suggestive position” between her legs and fresh semen in her mouth.
At trial, Hunt was convicted of capital murder by a jury of his peers and sentenced to death for his crimes.
