Alabama executed an inmate using nitrogen gas Thursday night, despite the man’s claims of innocence and a legal fight calling the execution method unconstitutional.
Anthony Todd Boyd, 54, died by breathing in nitrogen through a gas mask at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. The prison is where Alabama death row is housed, holds the state’s only execution chamber and is just miles north of the Florida border.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey issued a statement just after 6:30 p.m., confirming the execution had taken place. She had earlier informed the prison commissioner she would not grant clemency.
“On the evening of July 31, 1993, Anthony Boyd and 3 other men kidnapped Gregory Huguley at gunpoint in Anniston over a $200 drug debt,” Ivey stated. “Mr. Huguley was taken to a baseball field in nearby Munford where he was duct-taped to a park bench, doused with gasoline, and set on fire. All 4 co-conspirators watched as the victim perished from the flames. After trial, the court found Anthony Boyd to have been an ‘active and full participant’ in Mr. Huguley’s horrific death, noting that he bound the victim’s feet as the group prepared to burn him alive. After 30 years on death row, Anthony Boyd’s death sentence has been carried out, and his victim’s family has finally received justice.”
The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled Thursday afternoon that his execution would go forward. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals had denied Boyd’s request for a stay on Monday, and he appealed to the land’s highest court on Tuesday.
Boyd spent more than 3 decades on Alabama death row for his role in the 1993 burning death of Huguley, also known by the name “New York.”
But Boyd maintained his innocence in the case, although his legal battles haven’t recently centered around those claims. In a recorded phone call earlier this week, he pleaded with Ivey to meet with him prior to Thursday.
The governor, who had the power to commute his sentence, did not publicly respond to that request.
On Wednesday, anti-death-penalty advocates and Boyd’s spiritual advisor held a protest outside the Statehouse in Montgomery and delivered a petition for clemency to the governor.
The curtain to the execution chamber opened at 5:50 p.m. Boyd appeared to smile towards his witness room, which housed 4 of his witnesses, including his brother, and members of the media. He offered a thumbs up to the room, and made another sign with his hand.
When asked if he had any last words, Boyd said, “I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t participate in killing anybody.”
He continued, talking about how the court system isn’t fair. “There’s no justice in this state,” he said. “It’s all political... it’s revenge motivated.”
Boyd said, “It’s not about closure because closure comes from within, not an execution.”
He ended his final statement, “Keep fighting... I love every single one of y’all.”
“Let’s get it.”
On Thursday, he visited with 2 of his daughters, 3 friends, his mother, his brother, his son-in-law, and his spiritual advisor. He talked on the phone with his friend and brother.
He accepted his breakfast tray on Thursday but refused his lunch and dinner. He did not request a final meal.
On Wednesday, Boyd was visited by his daughter, brother and friend. He spoke on the phone with two friends, his brother and his spiritual advisor.
Sotomayor started the dissent asking readers to take out their phones and start the timer.
“For 2 to 4 minutes, Boyd will remain conscious while the State of Alabama kills him in this way,” she wrote. “When the gas starts flowing, he will immediately convulse. He will gasp for air. And he will thrash violently against the restraints holding him in place as he experiences this intense psychological torment until he finally loses consciousness.”
In his lawsuit, Boyd had asked for the option to die by firing squad.
“Boyd asks for the barest form of mercy: to die by firing squad, which would kill him in seconds, rather than by a torturous suffocation lasting up to four minutes,” wrote the justice. “The Constitution would grant him that grace. My colleagues do not. This Court thus turns its back on Boyd and on the Eighth Amendment’s guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment.”
Every method of execution also inevitably includes several steps signaling that death is imminent. The condemned inmate eats a last meal, says goodbye to loved ones, is escorted to the execution chamber, and utters his final words. It is no accident that the Protocol refers to these actions as ‘last’ and ‘final. The condemned inmate’s psychological and emotional pain likely increases as each step is complete—an unfortunate but inescapable consequence of death.
Sotomayor’s opinion read that the lower judge’s conclusion “is blind to the reality of what will happen to Boyd in this execution chamber and the additional and unnecessary psychological terror he will experience.”
“Allowing the nitrogen hypoxia experiment to continue despite mounting and unbroken evidence that it violates the Constitution by inflicting unnecessary suffering fails to ‘protect the dignity’ of ‘the Nation we have been, the Nation we are, and the Nation we aspire to be.’”
“7 people have already been subjected to this cruel form of execution. The Court should not allow Boyd to become the 8th.”
Gov. Ivey’s office issued this statement: “Governor Ivey personally reviews each case in which an execution has been ordered and set. That process is underway. At this point, however, we have not seen any recent court filings disputing Mr. Boyd’s guilt in the horrific, burning-alive murder of Gregory Huguley. Nor have we received a clemency submission to such an effect. The governor’s execution-review process understandably does not include one-on-one meetings with inmates, but this inmate’s invitation to “sit down and talk” delivered just hours before the scheduled execution is especially unworkable.”
Boyd’s appeal
Boyd has waged multiple court battles over his decades behind bars. The latest is his federal fight to have the state’s nitrogen execution process declared unconstitutional.
“This is not just about me,” Boyd said on a previous phone call.
“This is about the injustice that’s going on in this state,” he added, saying the state has spent more than 3 decades trying to kill “an innocent man.”
Boyd’s lawyers asked a federal judge this summer to call off his execution. He argued that the state’s way of carrying out nitrogen executions was unconstitutionally cruel and that his asthma and vertigo could present complications with the method and leave him severely wounded but alive.
Boyd chose the method over being killed with lethal injection in June 2018, when Alabama inmates had an option of switching their method. At the time, the state had approved the method of execution but didn’t have a plan in place on how to carry it out.
The 1st inmate to be executed using nitrogen gas in America was Kenneth Smith, who Alabama put to death in January 2024. Since then, 5 more men have been executed using the state’s gas protocol.
Earlier this month, a federal district judge disagreed with Boyd’s claims that the state’s way of carrying out nitrogen executions amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. “The Court does not doubt that a person consciously deprived of oxygen even for 2 minutes under the protocol experiences discomfort, panic, and emotional distress,” Chief U.S. District Judge Emily Marks wrote in her order.
She said any execution method “presumes the prospect of some pain, including psychological pain.”
“Every person condemned to die likely experiences feelings of angst, anxiety, stress, or panic. For hundreds of years, condemned inmates—regardless of the execution method—have been placed in the unenviable position of confronting their final moments.”
On Monday, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Judge Marks.
Boyd then turned to the U.S. Supreme Court in a final appeal. Without a stay of execution, Boyd’s attorneys argued, he will face “superadded pain and terror of being asphyxiated while remaining conscious for several minutes at the outset of his execution, despite being likely to prevail on the merits of his claim that the protocol violates his Eighth Amendment rights.”
His lawyers said that, in contrast to the prospect of pain, “there is no harm to (the state) to merely delay Mr. Boyd’s execution.”
The highest court in the country hadn’t yet responded to Boyd’s request by the time this story was published.
“Every method of execution also inevitably includes several steps signaling that death is imminent,” Marks wrote in her 64-page order earlier in October. “The condemned inmate eats a last meal, says goodbye to loved ones, is escorted to the execution chamber, and utters his final words. It is no accident that the Protocol refers to these actions as ‘last’ and ‘final.’”
“The condemned inmate’s psychological and emotional pain likely increases as each step is complete—an unfortunate ‘but inescapable consequence of death.’”
The case
Boyd was sentenced to death row for the July 31, 1993, slaying of Gregory “New York” Huguley in Talladega County. According to court records, Huguley owed a $200 drug debt to Boyd.
Records show Boyd and 3 other men took 34-year-old Huguley off a street in Anniston at gunpoint, tossed him into a van, and brought him to a baseball field in the Munford community. The men taped Huguley’s hands, feet and mouth and then taped him to a park bench. They doused him with gasoline and lit him on fire, where Huguley burned to death.
According to the judge’s order and court records, Huguley had pleaded for his life during the crime and promised to repay the men what he owed.
The other men charged in the crime were Robert Shawn Ingram, Moneek Marcell Ackles and Dwinaune Quintay Cox.
Ingram is also on death row. Cox pleaded guilty to murder and testified against Boyd, receiving a life sentence in exchange for his testimony, but leaving him eligible for parole. While no publicly available records showed that he was released on parole, prison data doesn’t show him listed as being currently incarcerated.
Ackles is serving life without parole and is currently housed at William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility, according to prison records.
Boyd has said he is innocent in the case, which primarily rested on witness accounts to the kidnapping and Cox’s testimony about the burning. He asked Ivey to meet with him at Holman prior to his Thursday execution and hear his side of the story.
“Before an innocent man is executed, come sit down with me and have a conversation with the guy that you deemed one of the worst of the worst,” he said in an audio clip recorded on Monday night.
“Show the people of this state that you are not just carrying out sentences and hiding your hands.”
Efforts to reach relatives of Huguley for this story for comment were unsuccessful.
Advocates make final pleas
Jeff Hood, Boyd’s spiritual advisor, and Hood’s nonprofit Execution Intervention Project has installed several billboards calling attention to Boyd’s case throughout Alabama, including 1 in Montgomery and 1 in Talladega.
He’s also arranged several press conferences, including one where Boyd called and spoke to the crowd live through a prison phone. Boyd talked about the “crooked courts” and illegalities of the justice system for several minutes while Hood held up a cell phone to the microphone earlier in October. He’s previously said he has never had a fair shot in court and had his case fully investigated.
And during the same press conference, his family said they thought he didn’t get a fair trial 3 decades ago in Talladega County.
Hood said at the time, “We want the people of Talladega to know that if Anthony Boyd is executed, the blood is on the people of Talladega’s hands… the blood is on the hands of the people of Alabama.”
Boyd is the chairman of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty, an inmate-run group in the state that advocates for an end to capital punishment.
“Thou shall not kill is one of the Ten Commandments,” Boyd said during a phone call that same day. “I’ve held to that all my life.”
“When you turn a blind eye to injustice, you’re not living God’s path. You’re not doing what he asked you to do.”
The group’s executive director, Esther Brown, has said Boyd is like a brother to her.
At that press conference, Boyd’s brother, mother and sister spoke, too. Maurice Boyd said it’s been hard having his brother on death row and called the situation “unfair.” He said his brother has been a role model for those in prison.
When asked what his life has been like while having his older brother incarcerated, Maurice Boyd said: “It’s been kind of difficult but at the same time, he’s still my brother. I can still go to him… I feel like I was cheated most of my life.”
Boyd’s mother spoke, too. She said Anthony Boyd, her firstborn, was a good person and was “railroaded” by the court system.
“They had already tried and convicted him before he went to trial,” she said. “It could be your son, your brother, your sister, your cousin, your uncle, whatever it is… and y’all need to step up and fight for them just like we’re fighting for Anthony.”
Boyd becomes the 5th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Alabama and the 83rd overall since the state resumed capital punishment on April 22, 1983. Only Texas (596), Oklahoma (129), Florida (120), Virginia (113), and Missouri (102) have carried out more executions since the US Supreme Court decision of Gregg v. Georgia on July 2, 1976, allowed states to resume death sentencing after a (4-year) moratorium was imposed via the June 29, 1972 Furman v. Georgia US Supreme Court decision.
Boyd becomes the 40th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1,647th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977. The last time the USA carried out at least 40 executions was in 2012, when there were 43 executions. There are at least 6 more scheduled executions in the USA this year, and if they are all carried out, 2025 would be the deadliest year in the country since 2009, when 52 executions were carried out.
Source: msn.com, Staff, Rick Halperin, October 24, 2025
"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
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