The U.S. Supreme Court refused Thursday evening to lift a lower-court injunction blocking Alabama from executing convicted double murderer Jeffery Lee by nitrogen gas, a method the state's own legislature authorized and that Lee himself had chosen. The 6-3 order, issued without explanation, left Lee alive at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, and left the families of his two victims waiting yet again for a sentence handed down more than two decades ago to be carried out.
Only Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch said they would have granted Alabama's request and allowed the execution to proceed, the Associated Press reported. The remaining six justices, a majority that included every member of the Court's liberal wing and three of its conservatives, sided with Lee's lawyers without offering a word of reasoning.
The result: a convicted killer's lawful death sentence sits in limbo, a state's duly enacted execution method faces what Alabama officials call a first-of-its-kind judicial ban, and two people shot to death inside a pawnshop in 1998 still have no final accounting.
On December 12, 1998, prosecutors said Jeffery Lee walked into Jimmy's Pawnshop carrying a sawed-off shotgun. He shot and killed the owner, Jimmy Ellis, and an employee, Elaine Thompson, during a robbery. Lee, now 49, was convicted of two counts of capital murder.
His jury voted 7-5 to sentence him to life imprisonment. A judge overrode that recommendation and imposed death. Alabama ended the practice of judicial override in capital cases in 2017, and the state no longer allows a judge to disregard a jury's sentencing decision in death penalty cases. But Lee's sentence predated the change and remained in effect.
Bestselling author John Grisham weighed in on the case, calling on Governor Kay Ivey to commute Lee's sentence to life without parole. Grisham argued that the override practice had been "declared unconstitutional and so indefensible that Alabama itself abolished it in 2017," adding that "Jeffery Lee's jury made its decision, the Alabama Legislature later agreed that juries, not judges, should decide life or death sentences."
That argument may carry emotional weight, but it sidesteps a basic legal fact: the sentence was lawful when imposed, and no court has overturned the conviction or the death sentence itself. What the courts blocked was only the method.
The legal path to Thursday's order moved at a dizzying pace. In May, U.S. District Judge Emily Marks ruled that Alabama's nitrogen hypoxia protocol was constitutional. Lee had filed a lawsuit challenging the method as a violation of the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and he lost.
Then, on Monday, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Marks' decision. The panel called the roughly three minutes it could take for an inmate to lose awareness under the nitrogen protocol an "intolerable" time frame "given the suffering that would likely take place under Alabama's nitrogen hypoxia protocol."
On Tuesday, just days before Lee's scheduled execution, Judge Marks reevaluated the case in light of the appellate ruling and reversed her own earlier finding, concluding that Lee had shown "that the protocol constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment." She did not, however, block Alabama from executing Lee by electric chair or lethal injection.
Alabama appealed to the Supreme Court. Lee's lawyers asked the high court to keep the execution on hold, arguing it would be wrong "to allow an execution that has been found unconstitutional to proceed." The state countered that the lower courts had gotten it wrong. The Supreme Court's brief order came well after the hour originally planned for the execution.
The Alabama Department of Corrections confirmed that the execution was off for the evening and that the state would not attempt another method that night. How long the reprieve will last remains unclear.
Attorney General Steve Marshall did not hold back. He called the outcome "a miscarriage of justice, not for us, but for Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson, who Jeffery Lee brutally and senselessly murdered and left on the floor of their place of business." Marshall added: "Tonight I am also keeping their families in mind, many of whom were prepared to witness the final act of justice be served."
Marshall pledged that Alabama would continue pursuing the sentence. "The State is prepared to do whatever is necessary to see Mr. Lee's lawful sentence carried out," he said.
Lawyers with the Attorney General's Office made a broader constitutional argument worth noting. They warned the Supreme Court that the lower-court ruling, if allowed to stand, "would be unprecedented in American history. Not only does it portend the first-ever permanent ban on a legislatively enacted method, but it would expand the concept of cruelty well beyond the bounds of the Eighth Amendment."
That claim deserves scrutiny. Alabama's legislature authorized nitrogen hypoxia. The state began using it in 2024. Nitrogen gas has been used in eight executions across the country, seven in Alabama, once in Louisiana. If a federal court can now permanently ban a method the legislature enacted, the precedent reaches far beyond one case in Atmore.
Governor Ivey echoed Marshall's frustration. "While I am disappointed the Supreme Court did not allow the state to proceed with Lee's chosen method of execution, I remain committed to ensuring that justice is ultimately served for his victims," she said Thursday night. The Supreme Court has been busy this term, facing a crush of 23 pending opinions as the term races toward its close, and this order adds another unresolved question to an already packed docket.
Alabama's nitrogen method works by strapping a respirator to the inmate's face and replacing breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, causing death from oxygen deprivation. The state has defended it as humane. Critics, including the 11th Circuit panel, have focused on the time between the gas reaching the inmate and loss of consciousness.
The appellate panel zeroed in on the roughly three-minute window. During Alabama's most recent nitrogen execution, that of inmate Anthony Boyd, 30 minutes elapsed between Boyd exhibiting signs of being impacted by the gas and state officials closing the curtain to the viewing room to signal the execution was complete.
Whether that timeline reflects a flaw in the protocol or the inherent nature of any execution method is a question the courts have not fully resolved. Judge Marks initially found the method constitutional, then reversed herself within days after the appellate panel intervened. The Supreme Court declined to weigh in with any reasoning at all.
The Court's silence is itself notable. A 6-3 vote with no written opinion leaves Alabama, other states considering nitrogen, and lower courts with no guidance. It is worth recalling that the Court recently sidestepped a death penalty standard in another Alabama case, leaving a major legal issue similarly unresolved. The pattern raises a fair question: is the Court content to let lower courts reshape capital punishment law one injunction at a time, without ever putting its own reasoning on the record?
Lee remains at Holman Correctional Facility. Judge Marks' ruling left the door open for Alabama to pursue execution by electric chair or lethal injection, but the state has not announced whether it will seek a new execution date or challenge the nitrogen ruling further.
The families of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson have now waited more than 27 years since the murders. They were reportedly prepared to witness the execution Thursday. Instead, they went home empty-handed, again, because of a legal process that reversed itself twice in a single week.
Lee, for his part, did not request a final meal Thursday. Prison officials said he had potato chips, Skittles, water, and a Sprite in the hours before his possible execution. The detail is small but telling: the man convicted of ending two lives over a pawnshop robbery spent his evening snacking while the nation's highest court debated whether the state could carry out the sentence a jury's override judge imposed decades ago.
The broader legal landscape matters here. The Court has shown a willingness to intervene in Alabama cases when it sees fit, including in recent redistricting disputes. But on the question of whether a state can use a method its own legislature approved to execute a convicted murderer, six justices chose silence.
Alabama's Attorney General framed the stakes plainly: if the lower-court ruling stands, it would mark the first time in American history that a federal court permanently banned a legislatively enacted execution method. That is not a small thing. Legislatures, not judges, are supposed to make policy choices about how states carry out lawful sentences. When courts step in to override those choices, especially on grounds as contested and fast-shifting as this week's rulings, the balance of power tilts away from elected officials and toward unelected judges.
The Court's own recent rulings in other contexts have shown a willingness to draw clear lines. The nitrogen case called for the same clarity. Instead, six justices punted.
Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson cannot wait any longer. Their families can, and apparently must. The question is whether any court will ever let Alabama finish what a lawful sentence began, or whether the process itself has become the punishment for everyone except the man who pulled the trigger.
