What happened
The Supreme Court on Thursday night rejected Alabama’s emergency request to proceed with the execution of convicted murderer Jeffery Lee using nitrogen gas, despite lower courts finding the method unconstitutionally cruel. Three conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — said they would have allowed the scheduled execution to proceed. Lee, convicted of killing two people in a pawnshop in 1998, would have been the ninth inmate killed by nitrogen hypoxia since Alabama pioneered the oxygen-starvation method in 2024.
Who said what
The Supreme Court’s decision “capped an extraordinary legal back-and-forth over the humaneness” of nitrogen hypoxia, The Associated Press said, and handed “at least a temporary, rare victory for opponents of capital punishment.” It is “highly unusual for the Supreme Court to stop an execution at the last minute,” The New York Times said, and this aberration “potentially sets the stage for a broader legal battle over the constitutionality” of the controversial execution tool.
What next?
Alabama is “prepared to do whatever is necessary” to see Lee’s “lawful sentence carried out,” state Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement. Lee’s legal team urged Gov. Kay Ivey (R) to “restore the jury’s verdict of life without parole,” which the trial judge overruled using a since-abolished override option.
Lower courts had found the method of execution to be a cruel and unusual punishment
