Alabama inmate set to die by nitrogen gas asks for firing squad, hanging to avoid "conscious suffocation"
Anthony Boyd has filed a lawsuit challenging the relatively new and controversial execution method that uses lethal gas to cause suffocation, arguing its application is unconstitutionally cruel — something multiple inmates facing the same fate in Alabama have tried to prove with legal actions.
Witnesses to previous nitrogen gas executions have raised concerns about whether the method results in unnecessary suffering. So far, no cases arguing against its use have been successful in court.
Boyd is on death row for the 1993 murder of Gregory Huguley, according to court filings, which show he was one of four men convicted in the crime. Prosecutors said in those filings that Huguley was burned to death after failing to make a payment for cocaine.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey announced Boyd's execution date on Monday in a letter addressed to Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm. The letter referenced an execution warrant filed by the state's Supreme Court that set a timeframe for Boyd's death to be carried out between Oct. 23 and 24. Neither Ivey's letter nor the warrant specifies nitrogen hypoxia as the execution method, but a spokesperson for the governor's office confirmed it in an email to reporters.
Attorneys for Boyd are pushing for an alternative execution method in his lawsuit against the state, which accuses Alabama of lacking "sufficient safeguards to prevent conscious suffocation from happening" when nitrogen hypoxia is used. The lawsuit has proposed executions by firing squad, hanging or medical-aid-in-dying as alternatives.
Nitrogen hypoxia originally emerged as an experimental execution method in Alabama in 2018, after the state, like others that still used the death penalty, had struggled to obtain lethal injection drugs and faced widespread public scrutiny over botched procedures. At the time, all inmates on its death row were given a choice to elect nitrogen hypoxia over lethal injection, the default method, and Boyd was among a handful of them who chose it, despite not knowing what it entailed, records show. Alabama eventually released a redacted protocol for nitrogen gas executions in 2023, and started to carry out such executions at the beginning of last year.
Alabama has executed five inmates using the nitrogen protocol, and a sixth is scheduled to die by that method before Boyd's execution date in October. While secrecy laws allow most details about the procedure to remain hidden from the public, and the inmates themselves, what is known about nitrogen hypoxia indicates that condemned individuals are forced to breathe pure nitrogen through a gas mask until asphyxiation occurs.
In Boyd's lawsuit, attorneys argued that each inmate previously executed using Alabama's nitrogen hypoxia protocol "was observed to gasp for air and struggle against their harness for several minutes after the nitrogen would begin to flow" and "showed signs of conscious suffocation, terror, and pain."
Responding to criticisms and scrutiny over the procedure, Alabama officials have maintained that inmates put to death by nitrogen hypoxia lose consciousness quickly and do not experience pain that meets constitutional criteria for cruel and unusual punishment.
Outside of Alabama, only Louisiana has used nitrogen hypoxia to execute a death row inmate. Arkansas, Mississippi and Oklahoma technically allow the procedure.
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