Alabama has sought permission to carry out the death sentence on a man by lethal injection after a series of court rulings blocked the use of nitrogen gas and cast doubt on the future of the method in the state. The Alabama Attorney General’s office has filed a motion asking the Alabama Supreme Court to authorise the execution of Jeffery Lee, this time using lethal injection. The request came less than 24 hours after the state had seen its plans to use nitrogen on Lee, convicted of the murder of two people during a robbery in 1998, blocked. “In short, we have not been prevented from carrying out Lee’s death sentence, but only from doing so via nitrogen hypoxia,” the state’s lawyers wrote. This development came after a week of rulings that cast doubt on the future of nitrogen executions, a method Alabama began using in 2024. The method involves securing a respirator to the person’s face and replacing the breathing air with pure nitrogen, causing death by oxygen deprivation.
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