Updated

Updated · The New York Times · Jun 12

Supreme Court Blocks Alabama's 49-Year-Old Inmate Execution as Nitrogen Gas Method Faces Constitutional Challenge

Updated

Updated · The New York Times · Jun 12

Supreme Court Blocks Alabama's 49-Year-Old Inmate Execution as Nitrogen Gas Method Faces Constitutional Challenge

Q: A jury voted for life, but a judge ordered death. How does this now-banned practice affect Jeffery Lee's case today?

It is central to why Jeffery Lee is still facing execution at all. In 2000, Lee’s jury voted 7-5 for life without parole, but the trial judge used Alabama’s then-legal “judicial override” system to impose a death sentence instead. Alabama abolished judicial override in 2017, becoming the last state to end the practice. But the repeal was not made retroactive. That means Lee’s death sentence remains valid even though, if he were sentenced under today’s law, the jury’s life verdict would control and he would not be on death row. So the now-banned practice does not directly affect the Supreme Court’s latest ruling on nitrogen gas, which turned on the execution method. But it affects the entire posture of Lee’s case: he is only in this execution fight because a judge overrode the jury’s decision decades ago. That history has become a major fairness argument for Lee’s lawyers and supporters. They say his case shows the arbitrariness of Alabama’s old system because the state is trying to execute a man whose jury chose life, under a sentencing practice Alabama itself later abandoned. Former Alabama Chief Justice Drayton Nabers Jr. has urged Gov. Kay Ivey to commute Lee’s sentence to life without parole on that basis. In practical terms, the override keeps Lee eligible for execution today, even as the Supreme Court has now blocked Alabama from carrying it out by nitrogen gas in this case.

3 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Jun 12

An unsigned Supreme Court order halted Alabama's planned Thursday-night execution of Jeffery Lee, 49, after the state sought emergency permission to proceed.
Lower courts had already blocked the execution, finding Alabama's use of nitrogen hypoxia was likely unconstitutional in Lee's case, and the justices let that ruling stand without explanation.
Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented, but the decision still marked a rare last-minute Supreme Court intervention to stop an execution.
Alabama was the first state to use nitrogen hypoxia in 2024, and Lee would have been the eighth inmate executed by that method there and the ninth nationwide.
The order deals a setback to Alabama officials and could widen into a broader court fight over whether nitrogen-gas executions are constitutional.

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A jury voted for life, but a judge ordered death. How does this now-banned practice affect Jeffery Lee's case today?

With nitrogen gas now under fire, what does the future of execution methods across the nation look like?

Supreme Court Blocks Alabama’s 8th Nitrogen Gas Execution: Legal, Ethical, and Human Impacts of a Controversial Method

Overview

The Supreme Court halted Alabama's planned execution of Jeffery Lee using nitrogen gas after a series of critical lower court rulings. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the nitrogen gas method posed a substantial risk of serious harm. U.S. District Judge Emily Marks then ruled that the protocol amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, permanently blocking its use for Lee. Judge Marks highlighted that Lee had suggested a firing squad as a less painful alternative, and Alabama failed to justify rejecting this option. These decisions underscore growing legal concerns about the constitutionality and humaneness of nitrogen gas executions.

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