Montgomery, Alabama—A federal judge on Friday declined a request by an Alabama death row inmate for a preliminary injunction to change the method of his upcoming execution, set to occur later this week using nitrogen gas. The decision was made amid contentious debates over the constitutionality of execution methods.
The inmate, Demetrius Frazier, faces execution for the 1991 crimes of rape and murder of Pauline Brown. U.S. District Court Judge Emily C. Marks determined that Frazier did not successfully demonstrate the substantial legal standards required to justify a preliminary injunction against the state’s planned method.
Frazier had sought to either halt his execution set for this Thursday or mandate the state to administer a sedative prior to the execution by nitrogen gas. His legal challenges are part of a broader dispute regarding the protocols associated with lethal injections and alternative methods like nitrogen hypoxia.
In 2015, Frazier and several other inmates merged their cases to contest Alabama’s lethal injection protocol, asserting that it violated constitutional rights under the First, Eighth, and 14th Amendments. They proposed nitrogen gas asphyxiation as a less cruel alternative and suggested administering the sedative midazolam before execution to mitigate the distress associated with the process.
Introduced in August of 2023, Alabama’s nitrogen execution protocol was employed for the first time in January 2024 and currently does not include the administration of a sedative before death is induced. The method has since been used in three executions prior to Frazier’s scheduled date.
Judge Marks noted Frazier’s last-minute alteration in his legal argument as an attempt to delay his execution. She wrote that Frazier had previously endorsed nitrogen gas as an execution method, but now contests its application without a prior sedative as a violation of constitutional rights.
Frazier’s petition claimed that the current method poses an “unacceptable risk of superadded pain due to conscious suffocation,” a claim supported by three other inmates previously executed under the same protocol.
However, the court was unconvinced that Frazier’s claim substantiated a breach of the Eighth Amendment, which guards against cruel and unusual punishment. Marks criticized the timing of Frazier’s latest legal challenge and described it as an unjustifiable and unacceptable delay tactic.
With Frazier’s execution imminent, it will mark the fourth utilization of nitrogen gas by Alabama. The state continues its practices amidst national scrutiny and ethical debates over execution methods in the U.S.
This year’s schedule of executions and ongoing legal contests underscore the complex intersection of law, ethics, and the death penalty in America.
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