Overview
- The Supreme Court on Monday denied Alabama’s emergency request, leaving in place stays from a federal district judge and an 11th Circuit panel that bar the state from using nitrogen hypoxia.
- An 11th Circuit three-judge panel found the state’s nitrogen protocol creates a substantial risk of severe 'air hunger' and remanded the case to Judge Emily C. Marks to consider whether a firing squad is a viable, less painful option.
- Jeffery Lee’s case is unusual because a trial jury voted 7-5 for life but the trial judge overrode that recommendation and imposed death, and Lee’s lawyers argue he should be executed by firing squad rather than nitrogen gas.
- Alabama officials including the attorney general and governor condemned the rulings and said the state will seek to carry out or reschedule Lee’s sentence while supporters of Lee praised the reprieve and human-rights groups pointed to witness accounts of convulsions and prolonged deaths under the nitrogen protocol.
- The district-court remand will decide practical questions about alternative methods and could shape whether other states that authorized nitrogen hypoxia can use the method in the future.