Alabama seeks lethal injection execution after court rejects nitrogen gas method

Alabama on Friday moved to execute a man with lethal injection hours after his nitrogen execution was prevented from going forward.

The Alabama Attorney General’s office asked the Alabama Supreme Court to authorize a death warrant for Jeffery Lee, this time using lethal injection.

“In sum, ADOC has not been barred from executing Lee, only from executing him by nitrogen hypoxia,” state lawyers wrote.

A spokesman for Lee’s legal team said they did not have an immediate comment on the action. The next step is for his attorneys to respond to the request at the Alabama Supreme Court.

The filing came hours after Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall promised to continue fighting to carry out Lee’s death sentence.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday night refused to lift an injunction blocking the state from executing Lee with nitrogen gas. A district judge issued the injunction after finding the state’s nitrogen protocol violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The injunction, however, did not block the state from using one of its other authorized methods, lethal injection or the electric chair, to put Lee to death.

Lee, 49, was scheduled to die by nitrogen hypoxia at 6 p.m. CT on Thursday, according to court filings. 

Lee has been incarcerated on the state’s death row since his conviction in a 1998 double murder and store robbery. The jury that presided over his criminal case voted 7-2 for Lee to receive a lifetime prison sentence rather than face the death penalty, but the trial judge overruled them. That practice, called “judicial override,” landed many inmates on Alabama’s death row before it was outlawed in 2017.

Alabama has consistently defended its nitrogen gas protocol as a humane alternative to lethal injection, the state’s primary execution method, which faced heavy scrutiny after several botched execution attempts. Legal challenges to the nitrogen gas method are set to go to trial in 2027.