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Alabama connected Friday moved to execute a antheral with lethal injection hours aft his nitrogen execution was prevented from going forward.
The Alabama Attorney General's bureau asked the Alabama Supreme Court to authorize a decease warrant for Jeffery Lee, this clip utilizing lethal injection.
"In sum, ADOC has not been barred from executing Lee, lone from executing him by nitrogen hypoxia," authorities lawyers wrote.
This undated photograph provided by the Alabama Department of Corrections connected Thursday, June 11, 2026, shows Jeffery Lee, who was sentenced to decease for sidesplitting 2 radical during a 1998 robbery astatine a pawn shop.
Alabama Department of Corrections via AP
A spokesperson for Lee's ineligible squad said they did not person an contiguous remark connected the action. The adjacent measurement is for his attorneys to respond to the petition astatine the Alabama Supreme Court.
The filing came hours aft Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall promised to proceed warring to transportation retired Lee's decease sentence.
The U.S. Supreme Court connected Thursday nighttime refused to assistance an injunction blocking the authorities from executing Lee with nitrogen gas. A territory justice issued the injunction aft uncovering the state's nitrogen protocol violated the law prohibition connected cruel and antithetic punishment. The injunction, however, did not artifact the authorities from utilizing 1 of its different authorized methods, lethal injection oregon the electrical chair, to enactment Lee to death.
Lee, 49, was scheduled to dice by nitrogen hypoxia astatine 6 p.m. CT connected Thursday, according to tribunal filings.
Lee has been incarcerated connected the state's decease enactment since his condemnation successful a 1998 treble execution and store robbery. The assemblage that presided implicit his transgression lawsuit voted 7-2 for Lee to person a beingness situation condemnation alternatively than look the decease penalty, but the proceedings justice overruled them. That practice, called "judicial override," landed galore inmates connected Alabama's decease enactment earlier it was outlawed successful 2017.
Alabama has consistently defended its nitrogen state protocol arsenic a humane alternate to lethal injection, the state's superior execution method, which faced dense scrutiny aft respective botched execution attempts. Legal challenges to the nitrogen state method are acceptable to spell to proceedings successful 2027.
Emily Mae Czachor contributed to this report.
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