Alabama inmate Anthony Boyd executed by nitrogen hypoxia after court denials

An Alabama inmate convicted in a 1993 killing was executed Thursday evening by nitrogen hypoxia at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility after courts declined to block the sentence. Anthony Boyd, 54, was pronounced dead at 6:33 p.m. following an execution procedure that replaces breathable air with pure nitrogen, causing death by oxygen deprivation.

State officials carried out the sentence after the U.S. Supreme Court denied Boyd’s request for a stay in an unsigned order. A federal district court and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had earlier refused to halt the execution. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the high court’s decision, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, warning that the method would amount to prolonged suffocation. Now imagine for that entire time, you are suffocating, she wrote, describing a scenario in which a person remains conscious while deprived of oxygen.

Boyd was sentenced to death for his role in the abduction and killing of Gregory Huguley in Talladega County. Prosecutors said Huguley was doused with gasoline and set on fire after failing to pay about $200 for cocaine. A witness who testified under a plea...