U.S. District Judge Emily Marks permanently barred Alabama from executing Jeffery Lee, 49, by nitrogen hypoxia, ruling the method violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Lee, sentenced to death for a 1998 double murder during an attempted robbery, had been scheduled to die Thursday.
Marks found that inmates likely experience "severe air hunger and corresponding emotional distress" for one to three minutes before losing awareness — a timeframe she called constitutionally "intolerable." The ruling came after the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed her earlier finding that the protocol was constitutional.
Nitrogen hypoxia has been used in nine U.S. executions since Alabama pioneered it in 2024 — all but one in the state, with Louisiana the only other to use it. Attorney General Steve Marshall's office has already appealed, and the case appears bound for the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never declared an execution method unconstitutional.