Authored by: Leigh Ann Overlaur
Photo Credit: Dana G. Smith, Nitrogen Execution Method Touted as More ‘Humane,’ but Evidence Is Lacking, Scientific American (Sept. 23, 2022), https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-execution-method-touted-as-more-humane-but-evidence-is-lacking/.
On October 23, 2025, Anthony Boyd was strapped to a gurney, forced to breathe through an oxygen mask, and suffocated on nitrogen gas for thirty-eight minutes before he was pronounced dead.[1] This process is one method of many that the state of Alabama uses to execute inmates on death row, yet arguably the most controversial.[2] Of the eleven executions that have been performed in Alabama since 2024, seven of them have been through nitrogen gas inhalation.[3] In each instance, attendants describe the inmates as “convulsing,” “gasping,” and “trembling,” making the scene a violent and brutal end to life.[4] Such illustration has garnered arguments of an Eighth Amendment violation, which prohibits the infliction of cruel and unusual punishments.[5] Nitrogen hypoxia causes death by introducing pure nitrogen gas into the inmate’s lungs, depriving them of vital oxygen before they suffocate to death.[6] This execution style bypasses a sedative in preparation for the initiation of the nitrogen gas, making the condemned inmate experience every moment during their asphyxiation.[7]
The death penalty dates back as far as ancient times and has manifested in many forms, but the United States has practiced the death penalty since its inception.[8] Following its predecessor, the states were heavily influenced by Britain’s strict punishments and public displays.[9] In fact, in 1834, Pennsylvania became the first state to make executions a private affair in correctional facilities rather than for public consumption.[10] To justify its usage, the death penalty has been recognized as serving two principal social purposes, which include “retribution and deterrence of capital crimes by prospective offenders.”[11] The Supreme Court has found that capital punishment is “an expression of society’s moral outrage at particularly offensive conduct,” and is essential to maintaining a civilized society so that citizens can rely on the legal avenues of retribution rather than their own devices.[12] It is apparent from the text of the Constitution that the Framers accepted the existence of capital punishment, so the Eighth Amendment focuses on setting restrictions in determining whether certain methods of execution “were too cruel to pass constitutional muster,” ensuring it was not comparable to torture.[13] With the Constitutional standard of the Eighth Amendment, the death penalty is limited within the boundaries of humanity and morality. Resultingly, as society evolved and technologies emerged, the Court began reconsidering the parameters of acceptable capital punishments.[14]
Nitrogen hypoxia was originally introduced because the long-standing method of execution, lethal injection, began to cause problems that were detrimental to the inmates.[15] The sole manufacturer in the United States of the traditional three-drug protocol stopped producing it in 2011, as it was unhappy with how its product was used for killing rather than healing, which was its original purpose.[16] After the United States Food and Drug Administration outlawed this drug from being internationally imported, states began to chemically alter the drug by trying to recreate its capabilities, which led to catastrophic results.[17] Those executed with this new formula would vomit, experience full-body convulsions, and gasp in pain, with some of these symptoms lasting up to two hours before their death.[18] Death by lethal injection creates a “false distance between the reality of capital punishment and the public perception” of it, since it has fabricated a myth of a peaceful sleep leading to death.[19] The tale has attempted to transfer to nitrogen hypoxia, but the results are too damaging.
Many states adopted nitrogen gas as their preferred method of capital punishment after the replacement of the lethal injection, with Alabama the third to do so.[20] Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed legislation authorizing the use of nitrogen hypoxia in 2018, giving the death row prisoners thirty days to choose their execution style, either by nitrogen gas or lethal injection.[21] The push for using nitrogen gas more regularly began after the state’s failed attempt to execute Alan Miller by lethal injection because the officials could not find proper IV access for the injection, leaving Miller hanging upside down, being prodded by a needle for over three hours.[22] However, the Alabama Civil Liberties Union cautions the state against utilizing this replacement method, as there is no scientific evidence to support that nitrogen gas is a humane way of dying.[23] In fact, one of Alabama’s largest suppliers of gas has refused to supply nitrogen to the state’s prisons for executions.[24] Even so, Miller was eventually executed by nitrogen gas in the state’s early experimentation, although no other state in the past seventy-five years has made a second attempt to execute someone after a first failed attempt.[25] Miller was reported to writhe in pain, thrash his body, and retch inside the mask after the nitrogen started flowing.[26] Thus, the symptoms of the replacement method mirror its botched predecessor, almost exactly.
In 1993, Anthony Boyd was arrested and charged with three other people as an accomplice in the killing of Gregory Huguley when he was only twenty-one years old.[27] Huguley was allegedly murdered over a $200 cocaine debt, for which he was doused with gasoline, set on fire, and burned to death.[28] According to the prosecution, Boyd was the least culpable out of the four co-defendants, as there was no forensic evidence that connected him to the crime, and was cited as only taping the victim’s legs after another accomplice, while armed, ordered him to do so.[29] The only co-defendant with a private attorney was given a parole-eligible sentence in exchange for testifying against the other perpetrators.[30] This defendant was released from prison in 2009, while the other three were sentenced to death, either in prison or by execution.[31] Boyd initially consented to execution by nitrogen hypoxia, but this was before any procedures were in place or any information about its effects were known.[32] He attempted to revoke this decision, contesting that the execution was unconstitutional, but this challenge was denied.[33] Although Anthony Boyd may have played a part in the murder of Gregory Huguley, the state must question whether it is a social protection to execute him with a mask while he is jolting, choking, and pain ridden, or whether it is an unconstitutionally cruel punishment not even fit for animals.
[1] Ed Pilkington, Alabama executes man on death row by controversial nitrogen gas method, The Guardian (Oct. 23, 2025), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/23/alabama-execution-nitrogen-gas-anthony-boyd; Prolonged Execution in Alabama Raises Alarms, Equal Justice Initiative (Oct. 24, 2025), https://eji.org/news/prolonged-execution-in-alabama-raises-alarms/.
[2] Nitrogen Suffocation, Equal Justice Initiative, https://eji.org/issues/nitrogen-suffocation/ (recognizing that nitrogen gas has been found inappropriate for euthanizing animals, as they “may experience distressing side effects before loss of consciousness”).
[3] Alabama Executions, Equal Justice Initiative, https://eji.org/alabama-executions/.
[4] Prolonged Execution in Alabama Raises Alarms, supra note 1.
[5] U.S. Const. amend. VIII.
[6] Grayson v. Commissioner, Alabama Dep’t. of Corr., 121 F.4th 894, 896-97 (11th Cir. 2024).
[7] Id.
[8] History of the Death Penalty, Death Penalty Information Center, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/resources/high-school/about-the-death-penalty/history-of-the-death-penalty.
[9] Id.
[10] Id.
[11] Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 183 (1976).
[12] Id.
[13] Id. at 170.
[14] History of the Death Penalty, supra note 8.
[15] Dana G. Smith, Nitrogen Execution Method Touted as More ‘Humane,’ but Evidence is Lacking, Scientific American (Sep. 23, 2022), https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-execution-method-touted-as-more-humane-but-evidence-is-lacking/ (noting that “[l]ethal injection has been the standard method of execution in the U.S. since the 1990s”).
[16] Id. (“The originally three-drug protocol was developed by an Oklahoma state medical examiner and included the anesthetic sodium thiopental, a paralytic drug called pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride, which is supposed to stop the heart within minutes.”).
[17] Id. (“Some switched to using a single drug, the barbiturate pentobarbital, which is a sedative and anticonvulsant often used before surgeries to treat epilepsy. It’s also commonly used in both veterinary and human euthanasia. Other states replaced sodium thiopental with the benzodiazepine midazolam, which is also used as a sedative before medical procedures. Neither pentobarbital nor midazolam function as an anesthetic or pain reliever.”).
[18] Id.
[19] Id.
[20] Nitrogen Suffocation, supra note 2.
[21] Hayley Bedard, Alabama Execution Witnesses Report “Violent Thrashing” of Prisoner and More Than 225 “Agonized Breaths” in Nitrogen Gas Execution, Death Penalty Information Center (Oct. 27, 2025), https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/alabama-execution-witnesses-report-violent-thrashing-of-prisoner-and-more-than-225-agonized-breaths-in-nitrogen-gas-execution; See Nitrogen Suffocation, supra note 2.
[22] Alabama Executes Alan Miller, Equal Justice Initiative (Sep. 26, 2024), https://eji.org/news/alan-miller-alabama-execution-2024/.
[23] Alison Mollman, Alabama Has Executed A Man With Nitrogen Gas Despite Jury’s Life Verdict, Alabama Civil Liberties Union (Feb. 1, 2024), https://www.aclu.org/news/capital-punishment/alabama-has-executed-a-man-with-nitrogen-gas-despite-jurys-life-verdict.
[24] Ivana Hrynkiw, Airgas refuses to supply nitrogen for Alabama executions, AL.com (Jan. 15, 2023), https://www.al.com/news/2023/01/airgas-refuses-to-supply-nitrogen-for-alabama-executions.html.
[25] Alabama Executes Alan Miller, supra note 23.
[26] Id.
[27] Alabama Executes Anthony Boyd, Equal Justice Initiative (Oct. 23, 2025), https://eji.org/news/anthony-boyd-alabama-execution/.
[28] Attorney General Steve Marshall’s Statement on the Execution of Convicted Murderer Anthony Todd Boyd, Alabama Attorney General’s Office (Oct. 23, 2025), https://www.alabamaag.gov/attorney-general-steve-marshalls-statement-on-the-execution-of-convicted-murderer-anthony-todd boyd/#:~:text=On%20July%2031%2C%201993%2C%20Boyd,as%20he%20burned%20to%20death.
[29] Alabama Executes Anthony Boyd, supra note 28.
[30] Id.
[31] Id.
[32] Bedard, supra note 22.
[33] Id.
American Journal of Trial Advocacy 