Death row inmate Casey McWhorter said he’s at peace ahead of his scheduled Nov. 16 execution when he is scheduled to die by lethal injection.

McWhorter, 49, however, said he would be happy if something suddenly changed his fate.

“I’m either gonna go out the back door with my toes up and my fights over and it’s time to go home, or the Lord’s gonna let me keep come back around and keep fighting until we find a conclusion,” he said.

McWhorter, a Guntersville, Ala., native, was sentenced to death in a 10-2 jury vote for the 1993 murder of Edward Lee Williams.

According to court records, McWhorter was 18 years old at the time when he and his 16-year-old friend robbed Williams in his home and killed him during the process. Williams’s son, who was 15 years old at the time, also conspired with the two to rob and kill Williams.

Court documents show the trio knew that the family wouldn’t be home for up to four hours when the two oldest went into the home and gathered up several items, including guns.

When Williams arrived home and saw the 16-year-old, he grabbed the rifle he was holding and began to struggle over it. Records indicate McWhorter fired the first shot into William’s body, which sustained 11 entrance wounds.

After the shooting, the two met up with Williams’s son and the stolen items were divided between the four individuals. During a law enforcement interview the next day, McWhorter said he was intoxicated and didn’t remember much at the time, and had indicated Williams’s son wanted to pay them to kill and rob Williams.

He told CNHI during a 15-minute call Nov. 2, from William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala., that he did not intend for Williams to die.

“It was just kids being kids, you know, talking, talking stupid things that we thought was going to impress the other you know, kind of thing,” he said.

Death Penalty Action — a group that aims to abolish the death penalty through advocacy, education and action — has urged Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to stop McWhorter’s execution for several reasons.

A petition launched by the group notes that he was sentenced as an adult by a non-unanimous jury (10-2) at age 18.

“Mr. McWhorter was denied youthful offender treatment. The offense took place a couple of weeks after his 18th birthday,” the petition, in part, states.

When reflecting on his childhood during the CNHI interview, McWhorter said he loved spending time outdoors going fishing and camping. But he said he was a troubled child.

“I had a loving family growing up, but I made things a lot more difficult than they should have been,” he said. “I had issues in my head that I didn’t know how to work out.”

McWhorter said he dropped out of school at age 16 and believes he could have been an “all A” student had he applied himself and avoided being around certain people.

“I’d gotten in with some of the wrong crowd and school was not a priority for me,” he said.

He moved out of his mom’s and stepfather’s house after dropping out of school and said he moved around to different homes “due to my own twisted perception of things at the time.”

When asked to clarify what he meant by “twisted perception,” he said he felt he wasn’t loved by his family and felt his step sister was loved more than him.

“Years later in hindsight. … I know beyond a doubt I was loved and I was blessed beyond measure,” he said. “I just was too foolish and stubborn to see it at the time.”

He craved a relationship with his father, who he said blamed him for his mother ending their relationship due to physical abuse.

“He kind of kept me at arm’s length growing up and that’s where a lot of my abandonment issues and twisted thoughts came from as far as I wasn’t loved or I didn’t fit in,” McWhorter said. “It was completely misconstrued through the eyes and mind of a child.”

During the last 30 years, he said his time waiting to be executed has been meaningful and given him purpose.

“There was a time I would have told you I would prefer to go around the corner and be killed versus spending the rest of my natural life in prison,” he explained. “But after years of pen pals, friends and people that have really blessed my life by coming into it or what not, I’ve come to understand that as long as we’re breathing, there’s still hope there’s still chance and it’s up to us what we do with it.”

He said he’s received positive words from pen pals he says have told him he’s helped them through dark times with some of the words he’s exchanged.

“Even if I never had a chance to actually get out, and actually spent the rest of my life in prison, the fact that I can change lives from here means something,” he said. “That’s something that’s worth fighting to keep breathing for.”

As for last words to Williams’s family, McWhorter said he would tell them he appreciates that they never sought capital punishment against him in the case, despite the outcome.

“And I hope that at some point in their lives, they can find something that will bring them peace and comfort. I wish I could give that to them, but I don’t know how,” he said.

CNHI was unable to contact any surviving family members for this story.

McWhorter also thanked his family for supporting him throughout the years and loving him “unconditionally.”

Ivey, on Oct. 18, set a timeframe for McWhorter’s execution to be carried out between 12 a.m. Nov. 16 and 6 a.m. Nov. 17.

James Barber, 64, was the first to be executed in Alabama, in July this year after an eight-month pause due to three botched lethal injections last year, two of which were subsequently halted.

McWhorter is one of 164 inmates on death row in Alabama, which is among the top five states with the highest death sentences per capita.

The Death Penalty Information Center notes the death penalty sentences are issued inconsistently and arbitrarily throughout the country.

For example, the organization noted, from 1976-98, DPIC has logged 8,190 murders with known offenders in Alabama. However, only 311 people were given a death sentence.

“In a death penalty system in which less than 2 percent of known murderers are sentenced to death, fairness requires that those few who are so sentenced should be guilty of the most horrific crimes or have worse criminal records than those who are not,” DPIC states.

DPIC reports that since 1976, the South has compromised 82 percent of executions — largely in the most populous states of Florida and Texas.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of death sentences issued in a year dropped to historic lows, largely due to limited court proceedings.

Of 21 death sentences issued in 2022 among 12 states, Alabama issued three. California issued the most, at 5. Nine of the death sentences issued in 2022 had more than one victim. In 2021, Alabama tied with Oklahoma in issuing the most death sentences, at four each. Eighteen death sentences were issued among seven states.