nitrogen hypoxia

The fate of Alabama death row inmate Jeffrey Lee remains in limbo following actions by the U.S. Supreme Court and a federal judge in Montgomery. This situation appears to be spilling over to other states and the debate over capital punishment.

Alabama is waging a last-minute legal fight to execute a man with nitrogen gas on Thursday night, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to set aside a judge's findings that the method violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that Alabama’s nitrogen protocol is unconstitutional and blocked the state from using it to execute Jeffery Lee, 49. The Alabama attorney general’s office is appealing the decision.

A federal judge on Tuesday permanently blocked Alabama from executing an inmate with nitrogen gas after declaring the method violates the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Alabama Public Radio student intern Raven Johnson produced a feature with an international view of the state’s choice of nitrogen gas to suffocate death row inmates.

A federal appeals court has ruled that Alabama’s use of nitrogen gas to put people to death needs more study of whether it violates a constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. This decision comes just days before a state death row inmate is scheduled to be executed using the controversial method.

A federal judge has ruled that execution by nitrogen gas does not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, rejecting an Alabama inmate’s claim that it causes excessive suffering.

A divided Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed Alabama's bid to be allowed to execute a convicted murder who was found by lower courts to be intellectually disabled.

Alabama has set a June execution by nitrogen gas for a man convicted of killing two people during a 1998 robbery of a pawn shop. Governor Kay Ivey set a June 11 execution date for Jeffery James Lee, 49. Lee was convicted of killing Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson while robbing a pawn shop that belonged to Ellis.

Governor Kay Ivey is commuting the sentence of Alabama death row inmate Charles “Sonny” Burton. He had spent the last thirty years awaiting execution for the 1991 killing of Doug Battle at a Talladega AutoZone store. Burton’s case attracted national attention since he did not pull the trigger. Prosecutors charged him under what’s known as felony murder. That law makes a convicted offender as guilty as the person who committed the killing.

Charles Burton has spent 30 years on death row at William C. Holman Correctional Facility, the site of the state's execution chamber.Burton's death sentence is the result of a legal doctrine known as felony murder, which allows prosecutors to treat anyone involved in certain felonies equally responsible for a killing that occurs during the crime.

One of Alabama’s longest-serving death row inmates could soon receive a new trial after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the state’s appeal of a lower court's ruling that prosecutors violated his rights by intentionally rejecting potential Black jurors.