(RNS) — The Supreme Court on Thursday (June 11) prevented Alabama from executing a man who became a Christian ministry leader during his 26 years on death row, deciding that killing him using nitrogen gas was unconstitutional.
Jeffery Lee, who is imprisoned for the murder of two people, elected in 2018 to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia over lethal injection. But following the method’s first use in 2024, he was among several Alabama inmates to file lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of nitrogen suffocation. After two lower court rulings blocked the method this week, deeming it cruel and unusual punishment, NBC News reported that the Supreme Court denied the state’s request to execute Lee yesterday evening.
Lee was convicted of fatally shooting Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson during a pawn shop robbery outside Selma, Alabama, in 1998. Lee’s trial lasted two days, and in a 7-5 vote, the jury chose a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. Yet, in a move that has defined Alabama criminal court proceedings, the presiding judge sentenced Lee to death. Alabama is one of three U.S. states that have historically permitted judicial override, a process that grants judges the power to overrule a jury’s decision.
In Alabama, judicial override has disproportionately sentenced defendants to death. A 2011 Equal Justice Initiative r …