Supreme Court liberals decry ‘excruciating suffocation’ in nitrogen hypoxia executions

Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor during a group portrait at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, October 7, 2022. Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices on Thursday laid out a remarkable critique of nitrogen hypoxia executions , asserting that the new form of capital punishment causes “psychological terror” and “excruciating suffocation” in the condemned and likely violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s senior liberal, encouraged Americans to start a stopwatch on their phones and reflect as the seconds turn into minutes.

“Now imagine for that entire time, you are suffocating,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent , which was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji