Kenneth Glad
A late-night Supreme Court order has kept Alabama from executing Jeffery Lee by nitrogen gas, while leaving the larger constitutional fight unresolved. The case now stands as a test of how far states can go in adopting newer execution methods.
The justices rejected Alabama’s emergency request to lift lower-court orders that barred the state from using nitrogen gas on Lee.
The ruling was procedural, not a final nationwide judgment on the execution method.
AP reported that Lee would have been the ninth person executed by nitrogen in the U.S., after seven executions in Alabama and one in Louisiana.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch said they would have allowed Alabama’s request.
Jury was overruled
Lee was convicted in the 1998 killings of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson during a pawnshop robbery in Alabama.
His jury recommended life imprisonment, but a judge overrode that decision and sentenced him to death.
That practice, known as judicial override, allowed Alabama judges to impose death even when jurors chose life.
Alabama abolished judicial override in capital cases in 2017, but the change was not retroactive, leaving Lee’s sentence in place.
Eighth amendment challenge
The case centers on the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
A federal judge blocked the nitrogen execution after concluding Lee was likely to succeed in challenging Alabama’s protocol under the Constitution.
Lower courts raised concerns that the method could create a substantial risk of severe pain before death.
Nitrogen hypoxia uses a mask to replace breathable air with pure nitrogen, causing death by oxygen deprivation.
What the judge said
The Supreme Court has previously allowed nitrogen executions to proceed.
In an earlier Alabama case, according to CNN, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned Americans to imagine the process lasting minute after minute.
“Now imagine for that entire time, you are suffocating, You want to breathe; you have to breathe. But you are strapped to a gurney with a mask on your face pumping your lungs with nitrogen gas.”
“Your mind knows that the gas will kill you,” she continued. “But your body keeps telling you to breathe.”
Wider death penalty fight
States have explored nitrogen executions as lethal injection has become harder to carry out, partly because drugmakers have objected to their products being used in executions.
Critics say witness accounts from earlier nitrogen executions show signs of distress and suffering.
Supporters in Alabama argue the method is lawful and that the state should be allowed to carry out valid death sentences.
Lee’s lawyers said: “His jury voted for life. Two courts ruled the method unconstitutional. Today, the Constitution prevailed.”
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said: “The State is prepared to do whatever is necessary to see Mr. Lee’s lawful sentence carried out.”
The ruling blocks Lee’s nitrogen execution for now, not every possible execution method.
Sources: AP, CNN
