Alabama inmate maintains innocence ahead of execution by nitrogen for 1993 murder
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — 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, saying he did not commit the 1993 murder.
Anthony Boyd, 53, is scheduled to be executed by nitrogen gas on October 23. A judge sentenced Boyd to death for his role in the killing of Gregory Huguley in Talladega in 1993. Prosecutors said Boyd duct-taped Huguley’s feet before another man doused him in gasoline and set him on fire over a $200 cocaine debt.
Standing in front of a billboard reading “Save Anthony Boyd,” family members and their supporters held a news conference in Talladega to ask the state to halt the execution. The nonprofit Execution Intervention Project and Boyd’s spiritual advisor, the Rev. Jeff Hood, organized the event. The group puts up billboards across the state.
During the press conference, Boyd called from the William C. Holman Correctional Facility and spoke via loudspeaker.
“I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t participate in any murders,” Boyd said. At his trial, Boyd’s lawyers argued that he was at a party that night and did not commit the murder.
A witness at trial testified as part of a plea deal and said Boyd duct-taped Huguley’s feet before another man doused him in gasoline and set him on fire. A jury found Boyd guilty of capital murder during a kidnapping and recommended by a vote of 10 to 2 that he receive the death penalty.
Shawn Ingram, the man prosecutors accuse of pouring gasoline and then setting Huguley on fire, was also convicted of capital murder and is also on death row in Alabama.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office released a statement saying Boyd’s case had been litigated for three decades and “he has yet to provide evidence that the jury got it wrong.”
“There was no poster 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 breathing air with pure nitrogen, causing the inmate to die from lack of oxygen.
Hood, a spiritual advisor who witnessed the first nitrogen execution and now works with Boyd, placed a gas mask over his face similar to that used by the Alabama Department of Corrections. Hood said the new method does not result in the quick death the state promised.
“What I saw was almost eight minutes of back and forth,” Hood said. Boyd’s mother became emotional and fell to the ground as Hood described what happened during the first nitrogen execution.
The state argued in court filings that the movements described were either inmates actively resisting or “involuntary movements associated with death.”
Boyd chose nitrogen as his preferred execution method after the state authorized the method, but at the time the state did not have procedures for its use.
Boyd has been on Alabama’s death row since 1995. He is the current president 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 those on death row are not the monsters that the public or the justice system portray them to be,” he said.
