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A federal judge has banned the U.S. state of Alabama from executing an inmate with nitrogen gas. Judge Emily C. Marks ruled that the method exceeds the ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The decision came a day after the appeals court overturned its earlier ruling, ruling that the method was indeed constitutional. The widely contested method has now been declared unconstitutional after all.
Judge Emily C. Marks prohibits the state from allowing Jeffery Lee to be executed with nitrogen gas. Lee was originally scheduled to be killed on Thursday in an Alabama prison. At issue is a man convicted of a double murder during a 1998 pawn shop robbery. He was to be executed by nitrogen gas at an Alabama prison tomorrow, but it won't come to that for now. A spokesman for Alabama's Attorney General Steve Marshall did say the state will challenge the decision. The case will likely end up in the U.S. Supreme Court, which has previously allowed nitrogen gas executions to proceed.
In her 26-page ruling, Marks wrote that legal procedures are constant in death penalty cases. "If Alabama adopted firing squads as a method of execution, that method would likely be challenged as well," she wrote. "There is probably no method - however humane - that could not be constitutionally challenged," Marks stressed, noting that the state has two other permissible methods of execution: injection and the electric chair. Lee is "not entitled to an injunction preventing the state from executing him by either of those methods."
Alabama was the first state in the United States to use nitrogen gas for executions. Seven executions using this method were carried out, beginning with Kenneth Eugene Smith in January 2024. The method involves placing a gas mask on the prisoner's face and pumping pure nitrogen gas to deprive the brain of oxygen.
The prolonged duration and visual turmoil during previous nitrogen gas executions lead to serious criticism from medics and human rights activists, as well as United Nations concerns about possible mistreatment.
©Pawel Czerwinski via Unsplash - illustration image