Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey set an execution date in October for Anthony Boyd despite pending legal challenges claiming nitrogen hypoxia violates Eighth Amendment protections. Boyd's lawsuit alleges the state's nitrogen protocol has "proven flaws," causes conscious suffocation and terror, and reflects deliberate indifference. A federal judge scheduled a Sept. 4 hearing in Boyd's case. Alabama was the first state to use nitrogen hypoxia and has executed five people with it; Louisiana used it once. After Arkansas authorized the method, 10 death-row prisoners there immediately filed suits challenging its constitutionality and due process implications.
Alabama was the first state to perform an execution with nitrogen hypoxia, in which nitrogen gas is administered through a mask to cause unconsciousness and death. It has now executed five people using the method. Louisiana has also used nitrogen hypoxia once, with a second prisoner who was set to be executed in March dying of natural causes three weeks before the scheduled execution date.
In Alabama, Boyd's lawsuit argues that given the "proven flaws" of the state's nitrogen hypoxia protocol, the court should conclude that it is designed to inflict additional terror and pain - or that the state is "deliberately indifferent" to evidence that it does. "Each prisoner previously executed by the State's Protocol showed signs of conscious suffocation, terror, and pain," Boyd's lawyers wrote in his lawsuit, filed in July against the Alabama Department of Corrections and Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall.
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