A federal judge on Tuesday permanently blocked Alabama from executing a man with nitrogen gas after declaring the method violates the ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Alabama became the first state in the nation to use the execution method in January 2024, but has faced repeated legal challenges to its use.
Emily C Marks, a US district judge, permanently enjoined the state from executing Jeffery Lee by nitrogen gas. Lee was scheduled to be executed Thursday at an Alabama prison.
A spokesman for Alabama attorney general Steve Marshall said the state is appealing the decision. The case will likely end up before the US supreme court, which has previously let nitrogen executions proceed.
In 2000, a jury sentenced Lee to life without parole for the 1998 murders of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson. A judge later declined to follow the jury’s recommendation and sentenced Lee to death. In 2017, Kay Ivey, an Alabama governor, signed a bill to ban such cases of judicial override, but the law only applied to future – and not past – cases. Lee’s attorneys have since asked Ivey to grant him clemency and end judicial override retroactively.