Anthony Todd Boyd, 54, was executed using nitrogen gas in Alabama on Thursday evening, despite a Supreme Court ruling that the method could cause ‘unnecessary suffering’
The state of Alabama has carried out its latest execution of a criminal using the controversial method of nitrogen gas, which causes four terrifying minutes of suffocation before death.
On Thursday evening, Anthony Todd Boyd became the seventh death row prisoner to perish by nitrogen hypoxia in the state, with Alabama prison officials restraining him and fitting a mask over his face just hours after the US Supreme Court condemned the execution method for causing “intense psychological torment.”
The 54-year-old Boyd had been convicted and sentenced to death for his role in the savage 1993 murder of Gregory Huguley in Talladega County, who was tied up and burnt alive over a trivial £200 cocaine debt. By 6.33pm on October 23, he was declared dead by officials at William C. Holman Correctional Facility.
In his final words, Boyd maintained his innocence, declaring: “I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t participate in killing anybody.” He went on: “There can be no justice until we change this system,” before uttering his last three words before execution: “Let’s get it.”
Officials refused to reveal when they started administering nitrogen gas to Boyd, but witnesses from the facility reported that he clenched his fist and started convulsing, whilst raising his head from the gurney, at approximately 5.57pm. This concluded after four minutes, but his ordeal would persist for some time, with laboured breathing continuing for a quarter of an hour before he finally became motionless.
The Associated Press reported that this appeared to take longer than previous nitrogen executions.
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey welcomed news of the execution, declaring: “After 30 years on death row, Anthony Boyd’s death sentence has been carried out, and his victim’s family has finally received justice.”
Boyd had consistently maintained his innocence regarding the 1993 murder, claiming that he was at a party the night Mr Huguley was burned alive over a minor drug debt. Authorities do not believe that he set the fire, but that he was an accomplice to the horrifying crime.
During his trial, one of his co-defendants testified after accepting a plea bargain, claiming that Boyd had bound the man’s feet with tape before another person doused him with petrol and ignited him. The duo observed Huguley burning for up to 15 minutes, until the flames eventually died down.
Boyd was found guilty of capital murder, with the jury reaching a 10-2 decision that he should receive the death penalty.
The individual believed to have poured the petrol and started the fire, Shawn Ingram, was also found guilty of capital murder and remains on Alabama’s death row awaiting execution.
Having exhausted his appeals with his execution date approaching, the death row prisoner, dreading death by nitrogen gas, petitioned to be executed by firing squad instead. A lawsuit filed by Boyd’s legal team argues: “The administration of pure nitrogen gas causes the prisoner to experience the extreme pain and terror of suffocation while still conscious, inflicting gratuitous suffering beyond what is constitutionally permitted.”
This contention was dismissed by a federal judge earlier this month, who determined that “the Eighth Amendment (of the U.S. Constitution) does not guarantee Boyd a painless death” but instead a death without unnecessary suffering.
The state and federal rejection of his plea for a firing squad was upheld by the right-leaning Supreme Court, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor penning a blistering dissenting opinion backed by two other judges.
Sotomayor highlighted the “mounting and unbroken evidence” that executions by nitrogen gas could breach constitutional protections, violating the prohibition on “cruel and unusual” forms of punishment.
“Boyd asks for the barest form of mercy: to die by firing squad, which would kill him in seconds, rather than by a tortuous suffocation lasting up to four minutes,” she wrote. “The Constitution would grant him that grace, my colleagues do not.”
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