Overview
- Two federal courts recently ruled that Alabama’s nitrogen hypoxia protocol creates a substantial risk of severe 'air hunger' and barred its use in the case of Jeffery Lee.
- A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit sent the case back to the district court to decide whether a firing squad is a feasible, less painful alternative to nitrogen hypoxia.
- The Supreme Court denied Alabama’s emergency request to lift those injunctions in a brief unsigned order with Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch dissenting.
- Lee’s case is complicated by the fact that his 1998 trial jury voted 7-5 for life but a judge overrode that recommendation and imposed death, a practice critics say raises fairness concerns.
- Alabama has used nitrogen hypoxia in multiple executions since 2024 with witness accounts of convulsions and prolonged deaths, prompting domestic and U.N. human-rights criticism and leaving the method’s wider legal fate unresolved.