Anthony Boyd, sentenced for murder on May 19, 1995
Louisiana Death Row inmate Jessie Hoffman is pictured.
Oct 14, 2025; Demopolis, Alabama, USA; Alabama Governor Kay Ivey speaks during the groundbreaking ceremony for the Alabama School of Healthcare Sciences high school.

Alabama executed the seventh inmate in the state with nitrogen gas just hours after the Supreme Court's three liberal judges condemned the relatively new method as causing "intense psychological torment."

Anthony Todd Boyd, 54, was executed on Thursday, Oct. 23, for the 1993 murder of a man named Gregory Huguley, who was taped up and burned alive over a $200 cocaine debt, according to court documents. Boyd was pronounced dead at 6:33 p.m. CT, according to state officials.

"I just wanna say again, I didn't kill anybody, I didn't participate in killing anybody," Boyd said as part of his last words just before his death. "I just want everyone to know, there is no justice in this state."

Boyd − whom prosecutors acknowledge didn't set the fatal fire − had requested that Alabama use a different execution method, such as the firing squad. The state has denied him, something Justice Sonia Sotomayor condemned in a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“Boyd asks for the barest form of mercy: to die by firing squad, which would kill him in seconds, rather than by a tortuous suffocation lasting up to four minutes,” Sotomayor wrote in the dissent from the majority's denial of Boyd's request for a stay of execution.

“The Constitution would grant him that grace," Sotomayor continued. "My colleagues do not.”

Here's what you need to know about Boyd's execution, including more about the nitrogen gas method, the Supreme Court's decision and Boyd's last-minute fight to meet with Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey.

Witnesses describe Anthony Todd Boyd's execution

Multiple media witnesses and Boyd’s spiritual adviser, who was in the death chamber, reported that the nitrogen gas began flowing at 5:57 p.m. CT. When it began, Boyd’s legs raised several inches off the gurney and he took deep, shuddering breaths for the next 14 minutes, reported media witness Sarah Clifton of the Montgomery Advertiser, part of the USA TODAY Network.

"It's like he's gasping for air,” Boyd’s brother said, Clifton reported.

Boyd’s breathing eventually became shallow and at 6:15 p.m., he began taking choking breaths and appeared to slightly jolt his head before it lolled back and then side to side, she reported.

His last breaths appeared to come at about 6:17 p.m., she reported.

Boyd's spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeff Hood, said that Boyd appeared to be conscious and fighting for life for at least 19 minutes by his watch. He said it appeared that Boyd's mask was not sealed, which would allow more oxygen in, though media witnesses including Clifton and an Associated Press reporter did not report seeing that.

"It's torture," Hood told USA TODAY after the execution. "We shouldn't do this to anybody. We are better than this. We are better than suffocating people to death."

The Alabama Attorney General's Office did not immediatley respond to questions about Boyd's mask or the amount of time the execution took, but Attorney General Steve Marshall has previously defended the method as “constitutional and effective."

Marshall said in a statement immediately after the execution that the state "remains steadfast in its commitment to uphold the law and deliver justice for victims and their families.

"I am proud of my team’s tireless dedication to that mission, and I pray that Gregory’s loved ones may finally find peace in knowing justice has been served," he said.

More about the nitrogen gas method

Alabama made history when it conducted the first execution by nitrogen gas in the U.S. in January 2024. Since then, the state has used the method on six other inmates − including Boyd − despite objections about possible sufferent and arguments from some in the Jewish community that it hearkens back to Nazi gas chambers during the Holocaust.

Louisiana became the second state to use the method when it executed Jesse Hoffman in March 2025, and Arkansas became the fifth state to approve the method when Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law in March allowing its use. The Ohio and Nebraska state legislatures have introduced similar legislation this year.

Witness accounts from some of the Alabama executions describe "suffering, including conscious terror for several minutes, shaking, gasping, and other evidence of distress," Louisiana Chief District Judge Shelly Dick wrote in an opinion that temporarily blocked Hoffman's execution. The witnesses saw inmates "writhing" under their restraints, "vigorous convulsing and shaking for four minutes," heaving, spitting, and a "conscious struggling for life," she wrote.

In response to the concerns, one Ohio official told lawmakers considering the method that nitrogen gas executions may very well be painful, according to reporting by the Ohio Capital Journal.

“The Constitution doesn’t guarantee a pain-free death," said Lou Tobin, executive director of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association, the Journal reported. “We don’t want to cause them unnecessary pain. ... But whatever they experience as part of an execution pales in comparison to the pain and suffering that they’ve inflicted on their victims.”

Anthony Todd Boyd's arguments against nitrogen gas

Boyd's attorneys had been challenging the nitrogen gas execution method in the months leading up to the execution.

"The administration of pure nitrogen gas causes the prisoner to experience the extreme pain and terror of suffocation while still conscious, inflicting gratuitous suffering beyond what is constitutionally permitted," according to a lawsuit filed by Boyd's attorneys in federal court.

A judge rejected those arguments earlier this month, ruling that "the Eighth Amendment (of the U.S. Constitution) does not guarantee Boyd a painless death" but rather a death free of needless suffering.

"The Court does not doubt that a person consciously deprived of oxygen even for two minutes under the Protocol experiences discomfort, panic, and emotional distress," wrote Chief U.S District Judge Emily Marks.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Boyd's appeal of the ruling, as did the Supreme Court. In the dissenting opinion of the high court's decision to allow the execution to proceed, Sotomayor asked people to imagine what it would be like convulse and gasp for air while nitrogen gas is being pumped through a face mask.

The body’s instinctual urge to breath kicks in but the mind understands that breathing results in death, Sotomayor wrote, saying the method violates the Constitution’s ban against cruel and unusual punishment.

What was Anthony Todd Boyd convicted of?

On July 31, 1993, prosecutors said that Anthony Todd Boyd and three other men tracked down Gregory Huguley for an unpaid $200 cocaine debt in Anniston, Alabama.

They kidnapped Huguley at gunpoint, stopped to buy gasoline and went to a nearby baseball field, where the attackers made him lie down on a bench, prosecutors said. They then taped Boyd’s hands, feet and mouth before taping him to the bench, dousing him in gasoline, and lighting him on fire, they said.

The men then watched Huguley “burn for 10 to 15 minutes until the flames went out,” and a softball team found the body the next morning, according to court records.

The other three men accused of the killing testified against Boyd. One of them, Quintay Cox, was able to plead guilty to a lesser charge of capital murder and get a lighter sentence in exchange for his testimony, according to archived news reports.

Shawn Ingram, whom prosecutors say is the one who poured the gas on Huguley and set the fire, also was convicted of capital murder and is on Alabama's death row.

Boyd has always maintained that he was at a party at the time of the killing and was in tears after a jury found him guilty of capital murder in 1995. A slew of family and friends testified in Boyd's favor, saying he was a good father and role model who helped neighborhood children with homework and coached them in youth basketball leagues.

Talking to members of the news media after the verdict, The Anniston Star reported that Boyd said: "I'll maintain my innocence until the day I die."

Anthony Todd Boyd's fight to meet with governor

In the days leading up to the execution, Boyd pleaded to meet with Republican Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, saying that he wanted the chance to prove to her that he was innocent.

"Please come sit down and talk to me before this execution is carried out, before an innocent man is executed ... and have a conversation with the guy that you deemed one of the worst of the worst," he said in a taped recording shared with reporters earlier this week. "Do the right thing and stop this execution."

Ivey's office said in a statement that the governor "personally reviews" each execution and that she would not be meeting with him.

"We have not seen any recent court filings disputing Mr. Boyd’s guilt in the horrific, burning-alive murder of Gregory Huguley," the office said. "The governor’s execution-review process understandably does not include one-on-one meetings with inmates, but this inmate’s invitation to ‘sit down and talk’ delivered just hours before the scheduled execution is especially unworkable.”

After the execution, she said in a statement that a court of law found that Boyd was an "active and full participant" in Huguley’s murder. "His victim’s family has finally received justice," she said.

When is the next execution?

The next execution in the U.S. is that of Norman Mearle Grim in Florida for the 1998 rape and murder of his neighbor, a 41-year-old lawyer named Cynthia Campbell.

Grim is set to be executed on Tuesday, Oct. 28. It will be Florida's 15th execution of the year, a record that's nearly double the state's previous highest annual executions of eight.

Contributing: Maureen Groppe, USA TODAY, and Sarah Clifton, Montgomery Advertiser

Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter who covers executions for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Alabama executes killer with nitrogen gas amid objections over 'gratuitous suffering'

Reporting by Amanda Lee Myers, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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