A rare move by the Supreme Court prevented Alabama from executing prisoner Jeffery Lee with nitrogen gas in June.But if Lee believed the surprise ruling would afford him a reprieve from the execution chamber, he was wrong.Alabama intends to put him to death Thursday evening by lethal injection, setting up a legal challenge because he didn’t choose such a method and the state initially agreed not to use it.Barring another last-minute court intervention, Lee, 49, is scheduled to be executed for the fatal shootings of two people in a 1998 pawnshop robbery near Selma: store owner Jimmy Ellis, an acclaimed Elvis Presley impersonator, and his ex-wife Elaine Thompson, who also worked at the store.
Lee’s lawyers insist he isn’t trying to permanently halt his execution but wants the state to apply the method he chose in a way that doesn’t violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.Lee has also asked to die by firing squad as an alternative, although Alabama doesn’t authorize it.Jeffery Lee was sentenced to death for the fatal shootings of two people during a 1998 robbery.Alabama Department of Correction via APIn 2018, Lee agreed to be put to death by nitrogen hypoxia, in which a person breathes the gas through a mask apparatus and is deprived of oxygen.
He elected it years before Alabama had even developed a nitrogen protocol.As part of a legal settlement, Alabama swore off executing him via lethal injection, which was the subject of a state review in 2022 after past executions failed but remains the primary execution method.Since early 2024, when the state pioneered the use of nitrogen gas, seven inmates have been put to death in that manner.Witnesses at those various executions have described prisoners’ heaving for long periods and convulsing and writhing against their restraints on the gurney.The family of Kenneth Smith, the first person who was executed by nitrogen, watched from the execution chamber at the state prison in Atmore as Smi...