Alabama executed Anthony Todd Boyd, 54, with nitrogen gas for a 1993 murder on Thursday, after he used his final words to maintain his innocence and criticize the justice system.
What To Know
Boyd was convicted of the grisly killing of Gregory Huguley over a $200 cocaine debt. Prosecutors said Boyd taped Huguley’s feet together before another man doused him with gasoline and set him on fire.
Boyd had always denied the slaying. “I just want to say again, I didn’t kill anybody, I didn’t participate in killing anybody. Just want everyone to know, there is no justice in this state,” Boyd said in his last words, as reported by the Montgomery Advertiser.
He added that everything he had said in his various appeals in court was valid, but that the courts “all backed each other up” in keeping his death sentence proceeding as planned.
“It’s all political, it’s all revenge-motivated. There is no justice in the state, there can be no justice in the state,” he said.
Boyd also said that justice can only be found when change is made because the execution process “is not about closure because closure comes from within, not from an execution.”
He closed his statement with, “I want all my people to keep fighting, you all matter. Let’s get it.”
Boyd refused a last meal, according to the Advertiser.
Alabama began using nitrogen gas for its executions last year. A gas mask replaces breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, causing death from a lack of oxygen.
Reporters said the execution appeared to take a long time and Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said it was the state’s longest nitrogen gas execution up to this point.
Boyd’s family members and supporters had pleaded for the state to spare his life but Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said that since his March 1995 conviction, Boyd provided no evidence to back up his assertion that he was innocent.
“For more than 30 years, Boyd sought to delay justice through endless litigation, yet he never once presented evidence that the jury was wrong,” Marshall said in a statement after the execution.
The case has seen a number of appeals in the past three decades, ending when the U.S. Supreme Court denied Boyd’s appeal on the ruling of his lawsuit against the Alabama Department of Corrections hours before his sentence was carried out.
Boyd has been on Alabama’s death row since 1995. He was chair of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty, an anti-capital punishment group founded by men on death row, the Associated Press reported.
What People Are Saying
Marshall, in his statement on Boyd: “In 2014, he challenged Alabama’s lethal injection protocol, and in 2018, he opted for nitrogen hypoxia—each time strategically avoiding accountability for his crime. Gregory Huguley was never afforded the chance to delay his own brutal and untimely death.”
