A death row inmate in Alabama, Anthony Todd Boyd, didn’t take his final breath on October 23 in silence, and if you know his tragedy, it was no surprise. The 54-year-old had been convicted for his role in the 1993 murder of Gregory Huguley and spent his last moments saying that not only was he innocent but also that Alabama’s idea of justice itself was flawed.
He said:
“I didn’t kill anybody (…) There is no justice in this state.”
Boyd’s plea was mainly about the way he would have to die. He begged for a firing squad, arguing that it would be much quicker and humane. But Alabama forced him to die by nitrogen gas. Some experts say that this method belongs in the pages of a dystopian novel. It’s been described as “torture,” “psychological torment,” and even “a human rights violation.”
So, did we just witness a breach of human rights in the name of justice? Boyd’s attorneys had also made a final appeal for what Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor called “the barest form of mercy.” Boyd was at the very least asking to die with dignity. But Alabama rejected the firing request and went ahead with nitrogen gas despite human rights experts going ballistic. According to UN rapporteurs, the method “may amount to (…) torture” and surely violates international law.
Just over an hour after 3 Supreme Court justices warned that Alabamian Anthony Boyd would suffer psychological torture, he was subjected to the longest nitrogen gas execution in US history, gasping for air more than 225 times. Read my eyewitness account: https://t.co/56eTbGtrCY
— Lee Hedgepeth (@lee_hedgepeth) October 24, 2025
Rev. Jeff Hood was Boyd’s spiritual advisor, and he has also witnessed the nitrogen execution of Kenneth Smith earlier this year. He said Boyd’s death lasted almost 20 minutes. “We shouldn’t do this to anybody,” Hood told USA Today. “We are better than suffocating people to death.” The ACLU and human rights advocates agreed as well. Yet, Alabama is defending its experiment in silent suffocation. Now, to make sense of Boyd’s horror, we have to reexamine Kenneth Smith’s execution in February 2024. It was the first of its kind in US history and was described as “minutes of horror” as Smith convulsed violently. Strangely, officials had no issue going ahead with it.
No independent medical research supports nitrogen gas as a humane form of execution, either. In fact, even veterinary guidelines prohibit it for euthanizing animals. Still, Alabama has made the gas chamber its go-to method. Louisiana and Arkansas are lining up to follow. But this efficient “alternative” is being seen as unnecessarily barbaric. The United Nations has repeatedly said that the US that nitrogen hypoxia may constitute “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.” In 2024, UN experts wanted an urgent ban on the practice. They cited Smith’s 20-minute ordeal and fear that Alabama (and states like it) were normalizing torture.
Justice Sotomayor said about Boyd’s case in Alabama:
“Boyd asks (…) to die by firing squad, which would kill him in seconds, rather than by a torturous suffocation lasting up to four minutes. The Constitution would grant him that grace.”
As more states toy with nitrogen gas as a replacement for lethal injections, the moral cost is getting outlandish.
NEXT UP: Boyd’s Final Words Moments Before Execution Revealed
