US Supreme Court Rejects Alabama Bid to Carry Out Nitrogen Gas Execution
Top US court leaves lower court ban in place, preventing Alabama from executing an inmate using nitrogen gas.
- Supreme Court rejects Alabama’s execution request.
- Lower courts ruled nitrogen gas method unconstitutional.
- State may pursue an alternative execution method.
The United States Supreme Court has denied a request by the state of Alabama to proceed with the execution of death row inmate Jeffery Lee using nitrogen gas, effectively upholding lower court rulings that blocked the controversial method.
The brief, unsigned order was issued through the court’s emergency docket and did not provide an explanation for the decision. However, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented, indicating they would have allowed Alabama to proceed with the execution.
The ruling follows decisions by two lower courts that found nitrogen gas executions likely violate the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Alabama had appealed those decisions in an effort to carry out Lee’s scheduled execution.
Earlier this week, a federal judge permanently barred the use of nitrogen hypoxia executions after hearing testimony from experts and witnesses during a trial held in April. The court concluded that inmates subjected to the method are likely to experience severe physical and emotional distress before death occurs.
Nitrogen hypoxia involves forcing an inmate to breathe pure nitrogen through a gas mask, depriving the body of oxygen until death by asphyxiation.
Lee, 49, was convicted of killing two people during a pawnshop robbery in 1998 and has spent more than two decades on Alabama’s death row. Although a jury initially recommended a life sentence, a judge later imposed the death penalty under Alabama’s former judicial override system, which has since been abolished.
Alabama filed its emergency appeal just hours before Lee’s scheduled execution on Thursday evening.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall described the halt as a miscarriage of justice for the victims’ families, saying they had expected to witness the sentence being carried out.
He maintained that the state remains committed to enforcing Lee’s sentence and may seek to execute him using an alternative method permitted under state law.
Alabama became one of the first states to use nitrogen gas executions after introducing the method in January 2024 and has carried out seven executions using the procedure since then.
