Alabama executes Anthony Boyd by nitrogen

Alabama executed Anthony Todd Boyd with nitrogen gas on Thursday after the Supreme Court rejected his final appeal. The 54-year-old man died at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore for the 1993 murder of Gregory Huguley. Boyd had asked to face a firing squad rather than nitrogen hypoxia, which he said would cause unnecessary pain.

Prosecutors said Boyd and three others kidnapped Huguley over a $200 cocaine debt in 1993. They drove the 25-year-old victim to a Talladega County baseball field, bound him to a bench, and burned him alive with gasoline. Witnesses said the group watched as flames consumed Huguley.

Governor Kay Ivey refused to stop the sentence after three decades of appeals. Justice Sonia Sotomayor and two colleagues opposed the execution method as torture that causes four minutes of suffocation. Boyd declared his innocence before his death and criticized Alabama’s legal system as revenge rather than fairness.

The state has performed seven nitrogen gas executions since introducing the procedure last year. Alabama accounts for most of the eight total nitrogen executions nationwide.