Alabama inmate maintains innocence ahead of execution by nitrogen for 1993 murder

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Family members and supporters of an Alabama inmate scheduled to be executed this month pleaded Wednesday for the state to spare his life as he maintained he did not commit the 1993 murder.

Anthony Boyd, 53, is scheduled to be executed by nitrogen gas on Oct. 23. A judge sentenced Boyd to death for his role in the in the 1993 killing of Gregory Huguley in Talladega. Prosecutors said Boyd taped Huguley’s feet together before another man doused him with gasoline and set him on fire over a $200 cocaine debt.

Standing in front of a billboard reading “Save Anthony Boyd,” family members and supporters held a news conference in Talladega to ask the state to halt the execution. The nonprofit Execution Intervention Project and Boyd’s spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeff Hood, organized the event. The group is placing billboards across the state.

During the news conference, Boyd called from William C. Holman Correctional Facility and spoke via speaker phone.

“I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t participate in any killing,” Boyd said. At his trial, Boyd’s lawyers maintained he was at a party that night and did not commit the murder.

A witness at the trial testified as part of a plea agreement and said that Boyd taped Huguley’s feet together before another man doused him in gasoline and set him on fire. A jury convicted Boyd of capital murder during a kidnapping and recommended by a vote of 10-2 that he receive a death sentence.

Shawn Ingram, the man prosecutors accused of pouring the gasoline and then setting Huguley on fire, was also convicted of capital murder and is also on Alabama’s death row.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office released a statement that Boyd’s case has been litigated for three decades and, “he has yet to provide evidence to show the jury got it wrong.”

“There was no billboard campaign to save Huguley, and Boyd showed no concern for the ethics of execution when he helped murder Huguley,” according to the statement.

Alabama began using nitrogen gas last year to carry out some executions. The method uses a gas mask to replace breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, causing the inmate to die from lack of oxygen.

Hood, a spiritual adviser who witnessed the first nitrogen execution and is now working with Boyd, placed a gas mask on his face similar to the one used by the Alabama Department of Corrections. Hood said the new method does not deliver the swift death that the state promised.

“What I saw was almost eight minutes of heaving back and forth,” Hood said. Boyd’s mother became emotional and fell to the ground as Hood described what happened at the first nitrogen execution.

The state has argued in court filings that the described movements were either inmates actively resisting or “involuntary movements associated with dying.”

Boyd selected nitrogen as his preferred execution method after the state authorized the method, but at the time the state did not have procedures for using it.

Boyd has been on Alabama’s death row since 1995. He is the current chair of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty, an anti-death penalty group founded by men on death row.

“I want people to know that people on death row are not the monsters that the public or the justice system portrays,” he said.