US Supreme Court Halts Alabama’s Nitrogen Gas Execution of Jeffery Lee
The US Supreme Court has denied Alabama’s request to proceed with the execution of death row prisoner Jeffery Lee using nitrogen gas. This refusal upholds previous rulings from two lower courts, which had blocked the method over concerns it violated the US Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
The Supreme Court’s brief, unsigned order on its emergency docket offered no explanation, though Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch registered their dissent, indicating they would have sanctioned the state's proposal. Alabama’s Attorney General, Steve Marshall, decried the halted execution as a “miscarriage of justice” for the state and the victims’ families.
Alabama has conducted seven executions using nitrogen gas since its introduction in January 2024, positioning itself as one of the few states employing this method. However, a federal judge recently imposed a permanent ban on death by nitrogen hypoxia following an April bench trial. Expert testimony established that inmates subjected to this form of capital punishment likely endure “severe air hunger and corresponding emotional distress, anxiety, physiological stress, and physical discomfort” before succumbing to asphyxiation.
Alabama lodged its emergency appeal mere hours before Lee, 49, was scheduled for execution at 18:00 local time. Lee was convicted for a 1998 pawnshop robbery resulting in two murders and has spent over two decades on death row. Despite a jury’s recommendation for a life sentence, a judge overruled this decision, imposing a death sentence under a judicial override procedure that has since been abolished.
The state retains the option to pursue Lee’s execution through an alternative method. Attorney General Marshall affirmed, “The State is prepared to do whatever is necessary to see Mr Lee’s lawful sentence carried out,” expressing sympathy for the victims’ families who “were prepared to witness the final act of justice be served.”
