2026年6月11日 / 美国东部时间下午4:37 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
作者：艾米莉·梅·查霍尔 新闻编辑
艾米莉·梅·查霍尔是CBSNews.com的记者和新闻编辑，通常报道突发新闻、极端天气和气候相关内容。她此前曾为《洛杉矶时报》、BuzzFeed和《新闻周刊》等媒体撰稿。
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阿拉巴马州一名死囚正等待美国最高法院的裁决，以确定该州是否可以按计划于周四晚间使用氮气缺氧法对其执行死刑。
阿拉巴马州总检察长办公室已向最高法院提起上诉，要求推翻一名联邦法官的裁决，该法官永久禁止该州使用备受争议且相对新颖的死刑方式对杰弗里·李处以死刑。阿拉巴马州于2024年首次引入该处决方法。
尽管批评人士经常指出，氮气缺氧法相关信息被刻意保密，以至于囚犯和公众都无法了解其运作原理，但已知的程序参数包括将防毒面具固定在被处决囚犯的面部，随后迫使囚犯通过面具吸入纯氮气。缺氧最终会导致窒息死亡。
根据法院文件，49岁的李原定于美国中部时间周四下午6点接受氮气缺氧处决。在预定处决时间前数小时，大法官们仍未作出裁决，阿拉巴马州州长凯·艾维办公室的一名发言人在给哥伦比亚广播公司新闻的声明中表示，“州长已准备好推进计划中的处决”，同时该州“将继续在法庭上捍卫其处决程序”。
但在一名联邦法官本周裁定阿拉巴马州的处决方式违宪，且上诉法院随后驳回了该州的暂缓执行请求后，处决是否会进行、将以何种方式进行尚不明朗。
阿拉巴马州总检察长史蒂夫·马歇尔及其团队随后向最高法院提交了申请。马歇尔于周四前往华盛顿，请求大法官撤销美国地区法官艾米莉·马克斯周二的裁决，该裁决禁止阿拉巴马州使用氮气缺氧程序处决李。马克斯作出了一项前所未有的判决，认定该处决程序残忍且违宪，违反了李根据第八修正案享有的宪法权利。
阿拉巴马州的上诉辩称，按照李的法律团队提议且马克斯在裁决中认可的那样，改用枪决处决李“不可行或难以立即实施”，因为阿拉巴马州目前没有相关处决程序。该州还坚称，在导致马克斯作出裁决的庭审程序中，该州的氮气处决程序被错误地描述为野蛮行为，并称囚犯会迅速失去意识。
马克斯在裁决中表示，“李已通过优势证据证明，该处决程序构成残忍且不寻常的惩罚”。此前，上诉法院于周一推翻了马克斯此前的一项裁决，马克斯当时曾认定该方法符合宪法。
周一的裁决认定，阿拉巴马州的氮气处决程序对囚犯构成“严重伤害的实质性风险”，囚犯可能在窒息前至少1至3分钟内经历“严重的空气饥饿及相应的情绪困扰、焦虑、生理压力和身体不适”。
李已在该州死囚区被关押了二十多年，他因1998年的双重谋杀和商店抢劫案被定罪。审理其刑事案件的陪审团以7票赞成、2票反对的结果，建议对李判处终身监禁而非死刑，但主审法官推翻了陪审团的决议。这种被称为“司法越权”的做法，在2017年被废除前，曾让众多囚犯登上阿拉巴马州的死囚名单。
国际人权领袖谴责氮气缺氧法是实验性、暴力且可能构成酷刑的处决方式。在阿拉巴马州2024年首次对一名此前多次接受注射死刑处决失败的囚犯测试该方法之前，已知历史上从未有人使用该方法处决囚犯。目前，美国已有8名囚犯通过氮气气体被处决，其中7人在阿拉巴马州，1人在路易斯安那州。
目睹过这些处决的证人后来分享了令人不安甚至有时令人毛骨悚然的描述：氮气开始流动后，囚犯会抽搐、呻吟，或表现出其他遭受痛苦的迹象。其中多名证人回忆称，囚犯的痛苦持续了至少数分钟，之后才似乎在行刑床上失去意识。在阿拉巴马州最近一次氮气处决中，目击者称囚犯安东尼·博伊德在停止动弹前，曾抽搐、颤抖和喘息了约15分钟。
但阿拉巴马州始终为其氮气处决程序辩护，称其是注射死刑的有效且人道的替代方案。注射死刑是默认的处决方式，此前在阿拉巴马州因多次执行失败也受到了严格审查。针对氮气处决方法的一系列后续法律诉讼，将于2027年进入庭审阶段。
Alabama inmate’s nitrogen gas execution tonight hinges on last-minute appeal to Supreme Court
June 11, 2026 / 4:37 PM EDT / CBS News
By Emily Mae Czachor News Editor
Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She typically covers breaking news, extreme weather and climate. Emily Mae previously wrote for outlets like the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.
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A death row inmate in Alabama is waiting on a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court to see if the state will be allowed to carry out his scheduled execution Thursday night using nitrogen hypoxia.
The Alabama Attorney General’s Office petitioned the high court to reverse a federal judge’s decision to permanently ban the state from putting Jeffrey Lee to death using the controversial and relatively new execution method that Alabama first introduced in 2024.
Although critics often note the intentional secrecy around nitrogen hypoxia that keeps inmates and the public from understanding how it works, the known parameters of the procedure involve a gas mask being strapped to the face of a condemned inmate, who is then forced to inhale pure nitrogen through it. The lack of oxygen eventually causes death from asphyxiation.
Lee, 49, had been scheduled to die by nitrogen hypoxia at 6 p.m. CT on Thursday, according to court filings. With the justices’ decision still pending hours before the scheduled time, a spokesperson for Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey’s office told CBS News in a statement that “the governor remains prepared to move forward with the planned execution” while the state “continues to defend its execution protocol in the courts.”
But whether and how the execution would proceed was not clear after a federal judge ruled Alabama’s method unconstitutional this week, and an appeals court subsequently rejected the state’s request for a stay.
The application, from Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and his associates, then made its way to the Supreme Court. Marshall traveled to Washington, D.C., on Thursday to ask justices to vacate a Tuesday ruling by U.S. District Judge Emily Marks, which barred Alabama from executing Lee using its nitrogen hypoxia protocol. In an unprecedented decision, Marks found the protocol unconstitutionally cruel and in violation of Lee’s constitutional rights under the Eighth Amendment.
Alabama’s appeal argued that executing Lee by firing squad instead of nitrogen gas, as his legal team proposed and Marks accepted in her ruling, was “not feasible or readily implemented” because Alabama does not currently have a protocol in place for it. It also insisted the state’s nitrogen protocol was incorrectly characterized as barbaric in the court proceedings that led to Marks’ decision, saying inmates quickly lose consciousness.
Marks had said in her decision that “Lee has shown by a preponderance of evidence that the Protocol constitutes cruel and unusual punishment,” on the heels of an appeals court ruling Monday that reversed an earlier decision from Marks, in which she found the method constitutional.
The Monday ruling determined that Alabama’s nitrogen protocol poses “a substantial risk of serious harm” to inmates who likely experience “severe air hunger and corresponding emotional distress, anxiety, physiological stress, and physical discomfort” for at least one to three minutes before suffocating.
Lee has been incarcerated on the state’s death row for well over two decades, since his conviction in a 1998 double murder and store robbery. The jury that presided over his criminal case voted 7-2 for Lee to receive a lifetime prison sentence rather than face the death penalty, but the trial judge overruled them. That practice, called “judicial override,” landed many inmates on Alabama’s death row before it was outlawed in 2017.
International human rights leaders have condemned nitrogen hypoxia as experimental, violent and potentially torturous. It had never in known history been used to execute someone before Alabama in 2024 tested it on an inmate who had previously survived multiple botched attempts to execute him by lethal injection. Now, eight inmates have been put to death using nitrogen gas in the U.S., including seven in Alabama and one in Louisiana.
Witnesses who observed those executions later shared unnerving, and, at times, horrific, accounts of inmates thrashing, moaning, or otherwise appearing to show signs of suffering after the nitrogen gas began to flow. Several of them recalled that the inmates’ distress went on for at least several minutes before they seemed to lose consciousness on the gurney. During the most recent nitrogen gas execution in Alabama, witnesses said inmate Anthony Boyd gasped, shook and heaved for some 15 minutes before he stopped moving.
But Alabama has consistently defended its nitrogen gas protocol as an effective and humane alternative to lethal injection, the default execution method that also faced heavy scrutiny in Alabama after multiple bungled execution attempts. An upcoming series of legal claims challenging the nitrogen method is set to go to trial in 2027.
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