On Alabama's Agenda: a Nitrogen Gas Execution

Alabama has scheduled an October execution by nitrogen gas for an inmate who has an ongoing lawsuit challenging the new method as unconstitutionally cruel. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Monday set an Oct. 23 execution date for Anthony Boyd. Boyd, 53, is one of four men convicted in the 1993 killing in Talladega of Gregory Huguley, who prosecutors say was burned to death after he failed to pay for $200 worth of cocaine, per the AP. Boyd's lawsuit challenges the use of nitrogen gas as unconstitutionally cruel, suggesting a firing squad, hanging, or medical aid-in-dying as better alternatives. A federal judge has scheduled a Sept. 4 hearing in the case.

Alabama began using nitrogen gas last year to carry out some executions. The method uses a gas mask to replace breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, causing the inmate to die from hypoxia, or lack of oxygen. Alabama has used nitrogen to carry out five executions and has another planned in September. In 2018, Boyd selected nitrogen as his preferred execution method, but at the time the state hadn't developed procedures for using it. Lawyers for Boyd filed a federal lawsuit in July—about a month after the state began asking for his execution date—seeking to prevent the state from executing him with nitrogen. They cited descriptions of how other inmates shook on the gurney while being executed with nitrogen gas.

"Each prisoner previously executed by the State's Protocol showed signs of conscious suffocation, terror, and pain," lawyers for Boyd wrote in the lawsuit. The Rev. Jeff Hood, a spiritual adviser who witnessed the first nitrogen execution and is now working with Boyd, said Monday that he was "horrified" by what he saw at that execution, which he described as being "suffocated to death." The Alabama attorney general's office has urged a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing there's "substantial evidence that nitrogen hypoxia is a painless way to die." The state argued that the described movements in previous executions were either inmates actively resisting or "involuntary movements associated with dying."