The Execution of Nitrogen : The Beginning of the End

Jeff Hood

Last night, the Supreme Court of the United States refused to let Alabama suffocate Jeffery Lee.

Last night, nitrogen lost.

Here is what I told every reporter who called…

”This is the beginning of the end of the most horrific execution method this country has ever devised.”

For two and a half years, they told us it was humane. They told us it was painless. They told us a man with an industrial mask bolted to his face would simply drift away. I was there. I know what drifting away looks like. It looks like a body fighting for air it will never get again.

I stood with men as the nitrogen took them. I watched them shake against the straps. I watched them gasp. I watched the State of Alabama call it mercy.

The courts finally looked.

Judge Emily Marks permanently barred Alabama from putting Jeffery Lee to death by gas. The Eleventh Circuit said the method most likely violates the Eighth Amendment. The court looked at the minutes a man stays aware while he suffocates...and called it intolerable. Intolerable. Write that word down. A federal court of the United States has now said in plain English what every witness has been screaming since Kenneth Smith.

Thomas dissented. Alito dissented. Gorsuch dissented. Let the record show their names beside this method. Let history remember who wanted the gas to keep flowing.

Understand what just happened. For ten years, the Supreme Court built a wall around every death chamber in America. They told the condemned to name a better way to die. They told them to prove their own agony in advance. They made these cases nearly impossible to win. The wall held through every protocol. The wall held through every gasping man. Tonight, the wall cracked.

This is the biggest ruling on how this country kills in a generation. The decisions that emptied whole classes from the death chamber...the children...the intellectually disabled...came down decades ago. Nothing since has struck down a method. This one wounds one. A federal court called nitrogen unconstitutional, and the highest court in the land refused to save it.

Be precise...because precision is how we win. The Court did not strike nitrogen in fifty states tonight. It refused to let Alabama kill. The binding word now belongs to the Eleventh Circuit...Alabama, Georgia, Florida. Thus, nitrogen is not nationally dead by law...nitrogen is mortally wounded...and the highest court in the land would not lift a hand to save it.

Now hear me. This victory does not stop at the Alabama line.

Remember the dead. Seven men have died beneath that mask in Alabama. One in Louisiana. Kenneth Smith went first in January of 2024. Anthony Boyd took over thirty minutes to die last October. These are not statistics. These are men I prayed over...men whose last minutes I carry in my body.

So, I am naming the rest. I am naming every state still holding the canisters.

Arkansas. My home. Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a nitrogen act into law and made us the fifth state to bless this horror. Attorney General Tim Griffin has promised the people he would use it. Twenty-five souls sit on Arkansas death row tonight waiting to learn whether their governor will make them the next experiment. Governor Sanders...stop this lunacy.

Louisiana. Governor Jeff Landry signed nitrogen gas into law. Attorney General Liz Murrill practically carried Jessie Hoffman to the chamber and promised four in short order. Fifty-five souls wait at Angola. Governor Landry…stop this lunacy.

Mississippi. Oklahoma. You wrote nitrogen into your statutes...and kept the masks in the closet. Keep them there forever.

The whole apparatus must be destroyed forever.

A federal court has now said what I saw with my own eyes. The method is cruel. The method is unusual. The method is unconstitutional. The mask can’t suffocate what is already apparent.

Justice Sotomayor already wrote the truth. A firing squad kills in seconds. Nitrogen suffocates for minutes. She said gassing a man turns the nation’s back on the Eighth Amendment. She was right then. The courts are catching up to her now.

To the governors...to the attorneys general...to every official with a protocol locked in a drawer. The country is turning. The courts are turning. Tonight, Jeffery Lee is alive because the highest court in the land would not sign its name to his suffocation.

Everybody else should be on notice.

You all built machines to steal the breath of the condemned.

Now…we are here to take the breath of the machines.

You are about to watch the execution of nitrogen in real time.