Some time after gaining entry into the home of the Hills, Jamie Mills attacked the couple by bludgeoning them with a machete, tire tool and ballpeen hammer.
Mills assaulted Floyd Hill first, while the latter was talking to him in the shed, just as the women were walking back to the porch.
He inspected the house after there was no response to his calls and knocks, and discovered the bodies of the couple inside the padlocked shed.
The autopsies separately conducted on both Floyd and Vera confirmed that both the Hills died from blunt and sharp force trauma; a trauma surgeon from the University of Alabama Hospital testified that Vera would have died within hours if she had not received the treatment she was given on the day of the murder.
In August 2007, Jamie Mills was tried before a jury at an Alabama state court on two counts of capital murder.
Mills's wife, who was called as a witness, testified that she saw her husband wielding a hammer and battering the elderly couple to death.
Unlike the previous execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith, the state asked to carry out the death sentence of Mills via the primary method of lethal injection.
[12][13] On March 21, 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court approved the death warrant on Mills, and directed the state's governor Kay Ivey to schedule his execution date.
[21] Chief U.S. District Judge Emily C. Marks rejected Mills's separate petition for a stay of execution, describing it as "inexplicable and inexcusable" and deplored the practice of filing last-minute appeals and requests for stay of execution when the facts of the case had been repeatedly upheld, stating that such abuse of court processes should be stopped.
[29][30] For his last meal, Mills ordered a seafood platter with three large shrimp, two catfish filets, three oysters, three onion rings and one stuffed crab.