{"id":213493,"date":"2026-06-12T05:55:59","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T05:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/supreme-court-denies-alabamas-attempt-to-execute-jeffery-lee-by-nitrogen-gas-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T05:55:59","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T05:55:59","slug":"supreme-court-denies-alabamas-attempt-to-execute-jeffery-lee-by-nitrogen-gas-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/supreme-court-denies-alabamas-attempt-to-execute-jeffery-lee-by-nitrogen-gas-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court denies Alabama\u2019s attempt to execute Jeffery Lee by nitrogen gas – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Supreme Court denied Alabama\u2019s request to execute a man using nitrogen gas<\/a> late Thursday after two lower court rulings blocked the method and found it violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
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The state had filed for an emergency order just hours ahead of the execution of Jeffery Lee, 49, scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday local time.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch noted their dissent and would have granted the state\u2019s request to overturn the lower courts.
Lee, who was convicted of murdering two people in a 1998 pawnshop robbery, is effectively spared from being put to death via nitrogen, but the state can still try other methods, and it\u2019s unclear how quickly it would seek viable alternatives.
\u201cTonight\u2019s ruling is a miscarriage of justice, not for us, but for Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson, who Jeffery Lee brutally and senselessly murdered,\u201d Attorney General Steve Marshall said. \u201cI want their families to know that we will never stop seeking justice for Jimmy and Elaine.\u201d
Gov. Kay Ivey said in a statement that the state can still reschedule Lee\u2019s execution.
\u201cWhile I am disappointed the Supreme Court did not allow the state to proceed with Lee\u2019s chosen method of execution, I remain committed to ensuring that justice is ultimately served for his victims,\u201d Ivey said, noting that Lee elected nitrogen over lethal injection in 2018, years before the state had developed a nitrogen protocol.
Last year, Lee filed a legal challenge to the nitrogen protocol, and instead asked to die by firing squad, a method not legal in Alabama.
Whether or not the state could execute Lee, who has been on death row for more than 25 years, by nitrogen gas was the question at the heart of his litigation that came to a head this week.
On Monday, a federal district judge in Alabama initially found the method was constitutional. Lee\u2019s legal team appealed, and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the opinion, saying nitrogen executions most likely violate the Eighth Amendment\u2019s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and ordered the district court to rule on the feasibility of a firing squad execution.
When both the district and appeals courts ruled in favor of Lee, the state filed an application for an emergency order to the Supreme Court.
The high court has upheld other methods of execution throughout the country, including lethal injection, electrocution and firing squad, but nitrogen gas has been the subject of intense litigation since Alabama became the first state<\/a> to begin using it in early 2024.
The method of nitrogen hypoxia requires prisoners to breathe in the gas through an industrial-grade mask while they are strapped to a gurney and deprived of oxygen. In its filing to the Supreme Court<\/a> on Thursday, the state said the method \u201crapidly causes death,\u201d describing the process as \u201chumane, painless, effective, and reliable.\u201d
Death penalty opponents, however, have criticized it<\/a> as torturous. The American Thoracic Society also filed a brief <\/a>in opposition to the state, saying \u201cnitrogen hypoxia executions cause intense, inhumane suffering.\u201d
Witnesses have described the condemned person shaking on the gurney, struggling against restraints and gasping for air. According to media witnesses, it took 30 minutes for Anthony Boyd, who was convicted of helping burn a man alive in 1993, to be declared dead during the last nitrogen execution in October.
The Supreme Court declined to intervene in that case. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a nine-page dissent<\/a>, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, saying \u201cfirsthand accounts from those executions reveal that nitrogen hypoxia is not at all what it was promised to be.\u201d
\u201cBoyd asks for the barest form of mercy: to die by firing squad, which would kill him in seconds, rather than by a torturous suffocation lasting up to four minutes,\u201d Sotomayor said. \u201cThe Constitution would grant him that grace. My colleagues do not. This Court thus turns its back on Boyd and on the Eighth Amendment\u2019s guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment.\u201d
Alabama has executed seven prisoners using nitrogen, while Louisiana has executed one. Alabama\u2019s primary method of execution remains lethal injection, which it last carried out in April 2025, but sourcing the drugs has been difficult<\/a> in the last several years.
The Rev. Jeff Hood, the spiritual adviser for two of the men who were executed in Alabama with nitrogen gas, reacted to the Supreme Court\u2019s denial Thursday.
\u201cThis is the beginning of the end of the most horrific execution method this country has ever devised,\u201d he said.
Lee was found guilty in 2000 of the murders of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson and the attempted murder of Helen King during the robbery west of Montgomery.
On Dec. 12, 1998, Lee, then 21, visited Jimmy\u2019s Pawn Shop with his brother and cousin, saying he was looking at wedding rings for his girlfriend. After browsing, he said he didn\u2019t have money on him and left. Minutes later, he re-entered the store with a sawed-off shotgun, shot and killed Ellis and Thompson and wounded King, authorities said.
Over his nearly three decades on death row, Lee says, he is remorseful for his actions and has found redemption through his devotion to Jesus Christ.
\u201cGod \u2014 he\u2019s not finished,\u201d Lee told NBC News<\/a> in a phone interview Tuesday from the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. \u201cHe\u2019s still working, not only on my behalf, but on the other brothers\u2019 behalf that are still facing this situation.\u201d
Lee\u2019s legal team has asked Ivey, the governor, to commute his sentence, in part because a judge sentenced Lee to death in 2000 after a majority of jurors instead voted that he get life without parole. The practice known as \u201cjudicial override\u201d was banned in Alabama in 2017, but previous cases such as Lee\u2019s were not included.
The legal team said Thursday night that \u201cthe Constitution prevailed.\u201d
\u201cNow Governor Ivey can finish what the jury started: restore the jury\u2019s verdict of life without parole,\u201d the team said in a statement.
Erik Ortiz is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital focusing on racial injustice and social inequality.
Abigail Brooks is a producer for NBC News.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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