Who Gets to Decide Who Lives or Dies.

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In a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court will not stop the state of Alabama from executing Anthony Boyd tonight. Justice Sonia Sotomayor was joined by Justices Kagan & Jackson in dissent. The vote comes after multiple attempts by Boyd to prevent his execution from going forward, including requesting to meet face-to-face with Gov. Kay Ivey to plead his innocence. The governor declined.

Anthony Boyd was convicted in 1993 for the killing of Gregory Huguley. Prosecuters claim Boyd, with the help of Shawn Ingram, doused gasoline on Huguley over failing to pay $200 for cocaine. There are serious doubts he was involved in the murder. Those doubts are based on the conflicting eyewitness accounts and a lack of physical evidence tying Boyd to the killing.

Boyd, who maintained his innocence, was part of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty, an anti-death penalty organization run by prisoners on death row in Alabama.

Bolts Magazine did a great write-up about his case and about Boyd that you can read here:

He Was Convicted Entirely On Clashing Eyewitness Testimony. Alabama Plans to Execute Him Next Week. - Bolts

No physical evidence connected Anthony Boyd to a 1993 murder. He was sent to death row on the word of a co-defendant who testified under the threat of capital punishment.

BoltsMichael Barajas

The state will use a newer, crueler form of execution to kill him tonight. Boyd will be tied to a gurney, and an oxygen mask will be placed on his face, and nitrogen gas will pump inside of it until he dies minutes later from nitrogen hypoxia. e will suffocate to death. Anthony will suffocate to death and will likely thrash and gasp like the others who've been killed by this method.

Boyd sought other methods of execution, including firing squad and hanging, with his lawyers arguing:

...each inmate previously executed using Alabama's nitrogen hypoxia protocol "was observed to gasp for air and struggle against their harness for several minutes after the nitrogen would begin to flow" and "showed signs of conscious suffocation, terror, and pain." 

Alabama execution using nitrogen gas, the first ever, AP explains

A man put to death using nitrogen gas shook and convulsed on the gurney as Alabama carried out the first-of-its-kind execution that once again placed the United States at the forefront of the debate over capital punishment.

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Justice Sotomayor's dissent sums up the cruelty that the court greenlit tonight.

He will be the 5th person executed in Alabama's this year and the 40th in the U.S. in 2025. The state continues to decide who gets to live or die in the name of justice, without justice ever being served.