An Alabama death row inmate used his final words to maintain his innocence before being suffocated to death with nitrogen gas.
Anthony Todd Boyd, 54, was convicted of murder in the 1993 group kidnapping and killing of Gregory Huguley over a $200 cocaine debt.
Boyd, who was 21 at the time, helped bind Huguley to a park bench before others in the group doused him in petrol and set him on fire.
He had long denied murder, something he repeated once again in the minutes before being executed at a prison in Atmore on Thursday.
‘I just want to say again, I didn’t kill anybody, I didn’t participate in killing anybody,’ Boyd told prison staff and witnesses at the William C Holman Correctional Facility, according to the Montgomery Advertiser.
‘Just want everyone to know, there is no justice in this state.’
He added that everything he said throughout his appeals was valid but accused the courts of ‘backing each other up’.
‘It’s all political, it’s all revenge-motivated. There is no justice in the state, there can be no justice in the state,’ Boyd said.
Boyd, who refused a last meal, closed his statement with: ‘I want all my people to keep fighting, you all matter. Let’s get it.’
State officials did not say exactly what time they switched on the gas but said he began to convulse and heave for 15 minutes just after 6pm.
He was pronounced dead at 6.33pm.
How does a nitrogen execution work?
The capital punishment method of nitrogen hypoxia has only been used a handful of times.
Hypoxia is a medical term for not enough oxygen in the body, while nitrogen is a colourless gas that makes up about 78% of the air inhaled by humans.
Yet if it’s the only gas people breathe, they can fall unconscious and die from lack of oxygen within minutes.
Under Alabama prison protocol, inmates are strapped to gurneys and have a mask placed on their heads that administers the gas.
Nitrogen hypoxia was looked at as an execution method because lethal injection of drugs that stop the heart has frequently gone wrong.
Supporters say it is safer and more humane, though critics say it amounts to torture and violates human rights.
This made Boyd’s death the longest nitrogen execution in US history.
Lee Hedgepeth, a journalist who witnessed the execution, said Boyd gasped for air more than 225 times before he was pronounced dead.
Reverend Jeff Hood, who stood by Boyd as he died, said this was the ‘worst’ nitrogen gas execution he’d ever seen.
‘I think they are absolutely incompetent when it comes to carrying out these executions,’ he said.
As much as Alabama officials had promised nitrogen was ‘a quick, painless, easy form of execution… this is by far nothing anywhere close to that’.
Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said Boyd’s shaking and heaving were involuntary.
Boyd’s family members and supporters had pleaded for the state to spare his life.
Yet Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Boyd never provided evidence to prove his innocence.
Marshall added: ‘For more than 30 years, Boyd sought to delay justice through endless litigation, yet he never once presented evidence that the jury was wrong.’
The Supreme Court rejected Boyd’s request to block his execution, despite the calls of the liberal judges, including Justice Sonia Sotomayor, to do so.
Death by nitrogen hypoxia, Justice Sotomayor said in a dissent on Thursday, is a ‘cruel form of execution’ that should be banned.
Asking readers to turn on a timer for four minutes, she wrote: ‘Now imagine for that entire time, you are suffocating. You want to breathe; you have to breathe.
‘But you are strapped to a gurney with a mask on your face pumping your lungs with nitrogen gas. Your mind knows that the gas will kill you. But your body keeps telling you to breathe.
‘That is what awaits Anthony Boyd tonight. For two to four minutes, Boyd will remain conscious while the State of Alabama kills him in this way.’
Alabama conducted the first known execution using nitrogen gas last year.
In 1993, when Body was put on death row, electrocution was the default method of execution
Boyd chose the method in 2018 before later challenging its use, urging a court in June to let him die by firing squad instead.
He said that to die by nitrogen would put him at a ‘substantial risk of severe pain and terror’.
The court rejected his claim, saying he had not ‘marshalled sufficient evidence’ to show that being killed by firing squad is less risky than gas.
Boyd was the 40th person expected in the US this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Six more people on death row are scheduled to die this year.
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