What happenedThe Supreme Court on Thursday night rejected Alabama’s emergency request to proceed with the execution of convicted murderer Jeffery Lee using nitrogen gas, despite lower courts finding the method unconstitutionally cruel. Three conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — said they would have allowed the scheduled execution to proceed. Lee, convicted of killing two people in a pawnshop in 1998, would have been the ninth inmate killed by nitrogen hypoxia since Alabama pioneered the oxygen-starvation method in 2024.
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