The Supreme Court issued a brief order keeping in place a lower-court block on Alabama’s planned nitrogen gas execution of Jeffery Lee, after lower courts found his evidence of prolonged suffering satisfied a demanding legal standard. The shadow-docket action
By Thursday night, Alabama’s plan for Jeffery Lee’s execution was still alive—but only in the narrowest sense. The Supreme Court issued a short, temporary order that kept lower-court rulings in effect while the justices paused the execution scheduled to use nitrogen gas.
The order came as part of the Court’s shadow docket, a fast-moving channel reserved for emergency matters. It marks an unusual win for a man on death row: it is the first time in over five years that the Court refused to “un-block an execution that a lower court had put on hold. ” at least in a case arising through that enigmatic track.
Lovelace v. Lee is centered on a method that Alabama scheduled to carry out by asphyxiating Jeffery Lee with nitrogen gas. Lee argues that nitrogen asphyxiation will cause him too much suffering and filed a lawsuit seeking to be killed instead by a firing squad.
This is not the first death-penalty case to reach the Court recently. Just last month, the justices decided not to decide Hamm v. Smith—a case testing whether the Court’s Republican majority still reflects a longstanding principle that people with intellectual disabilities may not be sentenced to death. The Court heard oral arguments in Hamm. but later dismissed the case without issuing a decision. leaving intact a lower-court ruling that saved Joseph Clifton Smith from execution.
The question now is what the nitrogen-gas pause really means. The Court’s action in Lovelace was temporary. and death penalty advocates and defense lawyers alike will be watching whether it stays a one-off emergency delay or becomes a sign of how the justices may treat method-of-execution challenges going forward.
In Lovelace, the Supreme Court order consisted of two sentences: one keeping the lower-court orders in effect for now, and another signaling that Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Gorsuch would have allowed Lee to be killed by nitrogen asphyxiation.
Lee’s evidence at trial was the hinge of the lower-court rulings. Alabama’s planned execution would involve strapping a mask to Lee’s face and filling it with nitrogen gas. leaving him without oxygen until he dies. But Lee introduced expert testimony describing how slow the process could be and how much distress it would cause.
One of Lee’s experts testified that Lee could remain conscious for three to seven minutes once the execution begins. Another expert said Lee would experience “air hunger”—described as an experience that “can be far worse than pain” and that “ranks among the most distressing experiences that human beings can endure.” A third expert testified that if Lee were executed by bullets fired into his “cardiac bundle. ” the area of the body that includes the heart and several major blood vessels. he would lose consciousness within three to five seconds and die shortly thereafter. and that he would lose consciousness before his brain could process the sensation of being shot. meaning he will feel no pain.
The lower courts determined that this testimony was enough to sustain Lee’s claim under the Supreme Court’s method-of-execution framework. They concluded, in essence, that Lee may not be killed by nitrogen asphyxiation—largely because they saw a firing squad as less cruel.
What’s on the line is not whether Lee will be killed. The courts are aligned on that point; the fight is over how.
To understand why that fight matters. it helps to see how the law has shifted around death-penalty methods in recent years. Until fairly recently. lethal injection was the preferred method used by most states still performing executions. typically involving a three-drug cocktail: a drug meant to render the person unconscious and prevent them from feeling pain. a paralytic. and a third that stops the heart. In the 2010s. states struggled to obtain the first anesthetic drug as pharmaceutical companies refused to sell their drugs for use in executions—an issue tied in part to European locations of many companies and the European Union’s prohibition on exporting drugs for that purpose.
With unreliable anesthetics, some states moved toward less-reliable painkillers. A botched 2014 execution in Oklahoma used such a drug, and the inmate appeared to suffer extraordinary pain for as much as 43 minutes before dying of a heart attack.
The Supreme Court’s response to method-of-execution challenges has been sharply restrictive. In Glossip v. Gross (2015). the Court held that because some risk of pain is inherent in any method of execution. the Constitution does not require the avoidance of all risk of pain. The Court warned that if the Constitution required too much protection against excessively painful executions. it would effectively outlaw the death penalty altogether.
The Court’s Republican majority carried that approach further in Bucklew v. Precythe (2019). There. the Court said a method of execution is only unconstitutional if it seeks to “superadd terror. pain. or disgrace” to an execution. Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion also pointed to examples of execution methods that would fail this test: “disemboweling. quartering. public dissection. and burning alive.” The implication was stark: outside of methods typically associated with torture scenes. the Supreme Court’s framework left states wide room to choose.
Even so, Glossip and Bucklew did announce a path—however narrow—for inmates to challenge execution methods. To prevail. a death row prisoner must show the state plans to use a method that creates a “substantial risk of severe pain. ” and must propose an alternative method that is “feasible and readily implemented” and would significantly reduce that risk. Yet to date, the Supreme Court has never held a particular method of execution unconstitutional.
For defense lawyers and death row inmates. Lovelace is a test of whether those guardrails were meant to be more than a wall. Lee and his attorneys “called the Supreme Court on its bluff. ” the legal strategy described through the facts of the case—because lower courts found his evidence sufficient to meet the standard in Glossip and Bucklew.
Right now, Alabama plans to execute Lee by nitrogen asphyxiation. If the Supreme Court ultimately holds that method unconstitutional, it would be the first time the Court rejects a particular method of execution.
The Supreme Court’s temporary order does not decide that question. But it does signal something else: at least some of the justices who joined Glossip and Bucklew may be willing, in limited circumstances, to stop a specific method from being carried out.
The timeline and procedural context also matter. The Court’s temporary delay likely came because it needed more time to fully review the case. which arrived on the shadow docket—a mix of emergency motions and other matters decided on a very tight timeframe. The case also involved an unusual procedural issue that may have prevented the Court from deciding it on its shadow docket.
What emerges from the fight is a rare moment of motion in a system that has often treated method challenges as nearly impossible. Lovelace gives death row inmates, their loved ones, and capital defense lawyers a reason to hope they can make executions less brutal—even if they cannot stop them.
Lee’s road is still difficult. The temporary order may be exactly that: a pause, not a verdict. Whether it becomes a lasting change will depend on how the Court eventually treats the evidence of consciousness and distress during nitrogen asphyxiation. and whether a firing squad is seen as a constitutionally meaningful alternative.
But the legal pressure surrounding execution methods is already reshaping state practice. Many death penalty states are shifting their methods of execution—either to avoid a repeat of the botched 2014 execution in Oklahoma or to ward off legal challenges.
South Carolina provides one example described in the case record: it executed a man by firing squad as recently as 2025, after a condemned man chose this method over two other alternatives—lethal injection or the electric chair.
In Lee’s situation, the options were not equal. His challenge arose after he chose to be executed by nitrogen gas over lethal injection—yet Alabama did not give him the option of choosing a firing squad.
That asymmetry is part of the worry many states seem to be acting against: if a prisoner chooses a particular method. it becomes harder for them to complain about it later. By offering inmates the worst-case menu imaginable. some states appear to be preempting future Supreme Court limits by steering how challenges can be framed in court.
For Jeffery Lee, the Supreme Court’s brief, two-sentence order means the date is not the end of the story. For now. it keeps the lower-court blocks in place—and forces the nation’s highest court to grapple. at least temporarily. with whether nitrogen asphyxiation is too brutal to carry out as a matter of constitutional law.
Supreme Court Alabama Jeffery Lee nitrogen gas execution Lovelace v. Lee firing squad death penalty Glossip v. Gross Bucklew v. Precythe Hamm v. Smith Joseph Clifton Smith