Death Penalty News

The group said 25 Alabama death row prisoners remained under sentences imposed through a practice the state abolished in 2017. We The Jury —a new coalition of jurors, judges, attorneys, elected officials, community advocates and activists—is urging Governor Kay Ivey to grant clemency to death row inmates who were sentenced by judicial override, a now-illegal sentencing scheme that allowed judges to override a jury’s life sentence recommendation in favor of the death penalty.

After a week of legal volleyball, Alabama death row inmate Jeffery Lee’s execution—scheduled for Thursday evening—was called off after federal courts called the state’s nitrogen gas execution method “likely unconstitutional.” The state took the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping Lee could still be put to death tonight.  In an order issued at 8:10 p.m., the U.S. Supreme Court ordered that it would not lift a ban on Alabama executing Lee via nitrogen . In a short court order, the justices denied Alabama’s motion to go ahead with the execution.  Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch would have granted the appeal and let the execution proceed, according to the order. 

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama is waging a last-minute legal fight to execute a man with nitrogen gas on Thursday night, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to set aside a judge’s findings that the method violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that Alabama’s nitrogen protocol is unconstitutional and blocked the state from using it to execute Jeffery Lee , 49. The Alabama attorney general’s office is appealing the decision. The outcome of the eleventh-hour legal battle will determine if Lee’s execution goes forward Thursday night with nitrogen gas. It could also help determine the future of the controversial execution method Alabama began using in 2024.

A three-judge panel ordered a lower court to consider the feasibility of a firing squad for Jeffrey Lee but did not immediately stay his scheduled Thursday execution. A federal appeals court Monday ordered a new hearing for an Alabama death row inmate scheduled to be executed on Thursday, but did not stay the execution. The three judge panel of 11th Circuit Court of Appeals judges — U.S. District Court judges Adalberto Jordan, Robert J. Luck and Embry Kidd, appointed by Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden — ruled that Alabama’s use of nitrogen gas for executions violated the Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment for Jeffrey Lee, 50, who was sentenced to die for the 1998 murders of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson during a pawn shop robbery.

On June 11, the state of Alabama plans to execute Jeffrey Lee with nitrogen hypoxia . He will be the ninth person put to death by this method since its first use in 2024. Lee contends that nitrogen hypoxia will cause him great suffering. On May 28, Federal District Judge Emily Marks agreed with him but said his execution could proceed nonetheless. Hers is a remarkable and shockingly candid decision. It made history, coming after the first trial in the country on the constitutionality of nitrogen hypoxia. To her credit, Judge Marks offered an unusually detailed picture of the pain imposed by capital punishment.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has scheduled the execution of Jeffrey Lee by nitrogen suffocation for June 11, 2026, even though his capital jury voted 7-5 against the death penalty and chose a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. The trial judge overrode the jury’s verdict and sentenced Mr. Lee to death in 2000, relying on a unique Alabama practice that allowed judges to overrule jury verdicts in death penalty cases. Alabama is the only state where judges overrode jury verdicts of life to impose the death penalty routinely—in more than 100 cases since 1976. As a result, nearly 20% of the people currently on Alabama’s death row were sentenced to death by elected judges even after their juries chose life imprisonment without parole.

A former Alabama death row inmate is seeking a new trial after finding evidence that his trial attorney was affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan. Robin "Rocky" Myers, whose death sentence was commuted to life in prison by Gov. Kay Ivey last year, says in his appeal that John Mays, who represented him at his trial for the murder of Ludi Mae Tucker in 1991, did work for KKK officials in the 1970s and '80s and spoke at their events. "In violation of his right to the assistance of conflict-free counsel, Mr. Myers, a Black man, was represented at trial by John Mays, who had demonstrably deep ties with the Klan for two decades leading up to this representation of Mr. Myers," said the appeal, filed in Morgan County Circuit Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for a new trial for one of Alabama’s longest-serving people on death row after declining to review a lower court ruling that prosecutors violated his constitutional rights by intentionally rejecting Black jurors.  According to an article written by the Associated Press, one of the longest-serving death row inmates in Alabama might receive a new trial after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the state’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling that prosecutors had violated his rights by intentionally rejecting Black jurors.  According to the article, on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the ruling from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. This decision paved the way for Michael Sockwell, the 63-year-old death row inmate, to receive a new trial.

The scheduled execution of an Alabama Death Row inmate will not go forward next week as the state waits for the completion of a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation. A judge last month stayed the Aug. 21 execution of David Lee Roberts until a mental evaluation could be conducted to see if Roberts is competent to be executed.  The Alabama Department of Corrections said Friday that the report will not be completed by the scheduled Aug. 21 execution date.

Roberts was convicted of a 1992 murder and sentenced to death, despite the jury's recommendation for life imprisonment. His lawyers and activists argue he suffers from severe mental illness, citing family history and documented psychosis. Alabama’s next execution is temporarily on pause in order to assess if the inmate in question is mentally competent enough to be put to death. David Lee Roberts, a now 59-year-old who was convicted of the 1992 murder of Annetra Jones, was set to be executed by nitrogen gas on Aug. 21 as of June 2025.

A state judge has stayed an upcoming execution in Alabama to evaluate whether the man is too mentally ill to be put to death. The judge temporarily stayed the Aug. 21 execution of David Lee Roberts until it can be established whether he has a “rational understanding” of what is to happen to him. “Or similarly put, the issue is whether the petitioner’s concept of reality is so impaired that he cannot grasp the execution’s meaning and the purpose or the link between his crime and its punishment,” Marion County Circuit Judge Talmage Lee Carter wrote in the July 10 order.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WAFF) - An Alabama House committee rejected a bill that would have impacted sentences for dozens of death row inmates. The proposal would have required courts to resentence people sentenced to death by a judge who overrode a jury’s recommendation of life in prison. That practice was outlawed in 2017. Representative Chris England passionately argued it should be retroactively applied for more than 30 death row inmates who were sentenced to death over a jury’s recommendation.

Amnesty International and the ACLU of Alabama held a rally at the Alabama statehouse on Thursday in support of HB27, later marching to Gov. Kay Ivey's office to submit petitions calling for clemency for an inmate currently on death row. Robin "Rocky" Meyers was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in 1994. The trial judge then went over the jury and imposed a death sentence through judicial override.

More than a quarter of all inmates currently on Alabama's death row have chosen nitrogen gas as their execution method, and those decisions were made before the state used the gas for the first time to kill Kenneth Eugene Smith, state officials say. Smith, 58, was executed Thursday night at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore by nitrogen hypoxia, a method never before used on humans. There are 164 inmates on death row, according to data from the Alabama Department of Corrections.  In a Friday morning news conference, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said 43 inmates have chosen the method.

On January 25, 2024, Alabama executed Kenneth Smith using nitrogen hypoxia, a first in American history. Though state attorneys had assured courts that the method would cause “unconsciousness in seconds,” witnesses reported that Mr. Smith appeared awake for several minutes after the nitrogen gas began. They observed that he “shook and writhed” for at least two minutes before breathing heavily for another few minutes. “This was the fifth execution that I’ve witnessed in Alabama, and I have never seen such a violent reaction to an execution,” said media witness Lee Hedgepeth. Mr. Smith was pronounced dead 32 minutes after the gas began to flow.

Alabama's plan to execute a convicted murderer with nitrogen gas was labelled by campaigners as part of a 'Nazi legacy of experimentation that should not be repeated' Alabama’s plan to be the first state to use nitrogen gas to execute a convicted murderer has been criticised by activists who say it is “risky” and would be “mental torture” for the accused. Kenneth Eugene Smith, who was convicted in the 1989 killing of Elizabeth Sennet, is due to be put to death on Thursday after the courts declined to halt the execution.

Private equity firm Onex Corp partly owns company that makes mask for use in untested nitrogen hypoxia execution method A Canadian company is facing criticism for allegedly supplying the equipment for a state execution in the United States, in a case that has drawn outrage for the reliance on a seemingly untested method of execution. On Thursday, Alabama plans to kill inmate Kenneth Smith by suffocating him with nitrogen gas, a method never before used in the country. The US-based advocacy group Worth Rises and the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice says that in the execution, Alabama will use workplace safety equipment made by the subsidiary of a Canadian company. The state’s department of corrections would fix Smith to a gurney, apply a respirator mask to his face, forcing him to breathe pure nitrogen and causing death from oxygen deprivation. The mask and hose used for the execution are allegedly manufactured by Allegro Industries. The group says Allegro is a subsidiary of ...

This rush to execute before revisiting a condemned practice not only appears hypocritical but also cruel. Later this week, unless the extraordinary happens, the State of Alabama will execute Kenneth Eugene Smith. His case, entangled in a web of legal technicalities and ethical debates, epitomizes the complexities and contradictions of the American justice system. Smith, convicted in a 1988 murder-for-hire plot resulting in the death of Elizabeth Sennett, faces execution by nitrogen hypoxia, a method untried and raising serious concerns about its humaneness.

Kenneth Smith, to be executed in Alabama by untested gas method, tells Guardian of nightmares from failed lethal injection On Tuesday morning, Kenneth Smith will be moved within the Holman correctional facility in Alabama to the “death cell”, the bluntly named holding unit where condemned prisoners are placed two days before their appointed execution. Smith knows the cell well. He knows its dimensions and the feel of the place. He knows that it sits only about 20 feet from the death chamber where, barring a last-minute reprieve, he will be escorted in handcuffs and leg irons on Thursday before being strapped to a gurney to await his fate.

A group of Republican lawmakers raised concerns about the death penalty and advocated for legislation that  would abolish it in Missouri during a Tuesday press conference at the state Capitol — characterizing it as an issue of restraining government overreach and protecting life.  Rep. Chad Perkins, a Republican from Bowling Green, has filed legislation to abolish the death penalty and sentence those on death row instead to life in prison without parole.