BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Activists and legal advocates are intensifying a last-minute push to halt the upcoming execution of Jeffery James Lee, a death row inmate scheduled to die by nitrogen gas on Thursday at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.
The planned execution has drawn sharp condemnation from human rights groups, faith leaders, and legal experts. Opponents are pointing to a highly unusual trail of state judicial actions, coupled with growing national outrage over Alabama’s use of nitrogen hypoxia—a method that critics call a form of cruel and unusual punishment.
Lee, 49, was convicted of capital murder for the Dec. 12, 1998, shooting deaths of pawn shop owner Jimmy Ellis and store employee Elaine Thompson during a robbery in Orrville, a small town in Dallas County. A third employee, Helen King, survived the attack.
However, the case has long been a lightning rod for anti-death penalty advocates because of how Lee was sentenced to death. At his trial, the jury voted 7–5 to recommend a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Despite the jury’s decision, the trial judge used a practice known as “judicial override” to reject the recommendation and hand down a death sentence.
“A jury voted 7-5 that Lee should receive a sentence of life imprisonment. However, a judge overrode that recommendation and sentenced Lee to death,” noted a report from the Death Penalty Information Center, which keeps data on the case.
Alabama formally abolished the practice of judicial override in 2017, meaning a judge can no longer disregard a jury’s sentencing decision in capital cases. However, the state did not make the law retroactive. Lee remains among more than two dozen prisoners on Alabama’s death row who were sentenced through a mechanism that is now illegal in the state.
Advocates argue that Lee’s sentence is an artifact of an unjust, abandoned system. Activists also emphasize that the trial jury never heard critical mitigating evidence regarding Lee’s background, including a traumatic brain injury he suffered in a car accident, severe childhood abuse, and early childhood substance abuse.
“During sentencing, the jury did not hear key mitigating evidence including Jeffrey’s traumatic brain injury sustained in a serious car accident, severe childhood abuse, untreated mental illness, and substance abuse that began at age eight. Despite this absence, the jury still did not vote for death,” according to the Catholic Mobilizing Network, an organization advocating for clemency.
The legal battle over Lee’s execution has reached a fever pitch in federal court. On May 28, U.S. District Judge Emily C. Marks ruled that Alabama’s nitrogen gas protocol is constitutional, denying Lee’s request for a stay.
While Judge Marks acknowledged in her ruling that nitrogen gas executions are likely to cause “severe air hunger” and intense breathing discomfort for one to three minutes, she concluded that Lee failed to show the protocol violates the Eighth Amendment.
“While Lee establishes that death by nitrogen hypoxia involves some suffering, he fails to show that the protocol is cruel and unusual in violation of the Eighth Amendment,” Marks wrote in her decision.
Lee’s legal team immediately appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. In a recent twist, a federal appeals panel noted that Alabama’s use of nitrogen gas needs more study to determine whether it violates constitutional protections, though it stopped short of immediately issuing a stay. The panel asked a lower court judge to evaluate whether an alternative method requested by Lee, a firing squad, would be a feasible option.
The upcoming execution marks another chapter in Alabama’s deeply scrutinized history with capital punishment. The state has faced widespread blowback since it began using nitrogen gas, a method where a gas mask replaces breathable air with pure nitrogen, causing death by oxygen deprivation. Observers of previous nitrogen executions in the state reported seeing inmates shake and convulse on the gurney, sparking fierce debates between state officials and defense lawyers over whether the reactions represent involuntary movements or acute physical suffering.
These technical controversies follow a string of high-profile failures in Alabama’s execution chamber. In 2022, Gov. Kay Ivey was forced to temporarily pause all executions to conduct a top-to-bottom review of state protocol after correctional staff repeatedly botched lethal injections, failing to establish IV lines for hours on multiple death row prisoners.
Despite the ongoing litigation and public demonstrations, state officials are moving forward with the execution window. Ivey has set a strict 30-hour time frame for the execution, which is scheduled to begin at 12:00 a.m. on Thursday, June 11, and expire at 6:00 a.m. on Friday, June 12. The Alabama Department of Corrections has indicated a tentative start time of 6:00 p.m. on Thursday.