Alabama murderer executed by nitrogen gas after burning man alive | US | News
The state of Alabama carried out its last execution using the controversial method of nitrogen gas, which caused horrific asphyxiation lasting four minutes before death.
On Thursday evening, Anthony Todd Boyd became the seventh death row inmate in the state to die of nitrogen hypoxia when Alabama prison officials bound him and placed a mask over his face, just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court condemned the execution method as causing “intense psychological torture.”
Boyd, 54, was convicted and sentenced to death for his role in the brutal 1993 Talladega County murder of Gregory Huguley, who was tied up and burned alive over a small $200 cocaine debt. He was pronounced dead by William C. Holman Correctional Institution officials at 6:33 p.m. on October 23.
Boyd continued to declare his innocence, with his final words saying: “I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t participate in the killing of anyone.” “There can be no justice unless we change this system,” he added, before delivering his final three words before execution: “Let’s get it.”
Authorities did not say when they began supplying Boyd with nitrogen gas, but reports from the facility indicate that at around 5:57 p.m., Boyd clenched his fist and began shaking as he lifted his head off the gurney.
This ended after four minutes, but his struggle would continue for a while longer, taking deep breaths for a quarter of an hour before he finally lay motionless. The Associated Press reported that this took longer than previous nitrogen executions.
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey welcomed the news of the execution, saying: “After 30 years on death row, Anthony Boyd’s death sentence has been carried out and the victim’s family has finally received justice.”
Boyd has always protested his innocence in the 1993 murder, stating that he was at a party the night Mr. Huguley was burned alive over a small drug debt. Authorities do not believe he started the fire, but rather that he was complicit in this horrific crime.
At trial, a fellow defendant testified after taking a plea deal and said Boyd taped another man’s feet before pouring gasoline on him and setting him on fire. The two watched Huguley burn for up to 15 minutes before the fire eventually subsided.
Boyd was convicted on a capital murder charge, and the jury voted 10 to 2 to award him the death penalty.
Shawn Ingram, who is believed to have poured gasoline and started the fire, was also found guilty of capital murder and is also on death row in Alabama.
After exhausting his objections and his execution date approaching, the death row inmate, fearing he would be killed by nitrogen gas, requested to be shot to death by firing squad.
“The administration of pure nitrogen gas causes the prisoner to experience extreme pain and fear of suffocation while he is conscious and causes unnecessary suffering beyond what is constitutionally permissible,” a lawsuit filed by Boyd’s attorneys states.
That claim was struck down by a federal judge earlier this month, who ruled that “the Eighth Amendment (to the U.S. Constitution) did not guarantee Boyd a painless death,” but rather that he die without unnecessary suffering.
The state and federal rejection of the firing squad was supported by the right-wing Supreme Court; Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a scathing dissent, supported by two other justices.
Sotomayor noted “mounting and unwavering evidence” that executions by nitrogen gas may be unconstitutional and violate the ban on “cruel and unusual” forms of punishment.
“Boyd wants the barest form of mercy: Death by firing squad that will kill him in seconds, rather than a tortuous asphyxiation that can last up to four minutes,” he wrote. “The Constitution gives him this grace, my colleagues do not.”
