June 12, 2026
Death Row Inmate Jeffrey Lee Lives To See Another Day, But For How Long?
Apple Podcasts 
Spotify 
Castro 
RSS Feed The Supreme Court of the United States denied the state of Alabama’s request to execute 49-year-old Jeffrey Lee using nitrogen gas, agreeing with two lower courts that said it was cruel and unusual and therefore, unconstitutional. The late night decision, effectively halted Lee’s scheduled execution, but only temporarily. While Lee’s legal team declared it a victory, the state’s attorney general called it a miscarriage of justice and said Alabama is “prepared to do whatever is necessary to see Mr. Lee’s lawful sentence carried out.”
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks, it is Friday, June twelfth, and a man that was supposed to be executed last night is living another day. He might have another two, three, four, he might have who knows how long after the Supreme Court stepped in and kept the State of Alabama from executing Jeffrey Lee. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. When we hear Supreme we don't hear Supreme Court stepping into executions that often. They stepped in, but not quite to stop it.
00:00:33
Speaker 2: No, they just stopped the method of execution. And look, this was a big deal. This was down to the last minute. In fact, look, the State of Alabama had until six am, I believe, on Friday today to execute Jeffre Lee with the death warrants. So they actually sent their Attorney general and his staff up to DC to make these arguments to the Supreme Court. They wanted the Supreme Court to overturn two lower courts that this week said that the method of execution nitrogen gas was cruel and unusual and therefore likely unconstitutional, and they barred the State of Alabama from executing death row inmate Jeffrey Lee by using that method. They didn't stop the execution. They just stopped how he was going to be executed. And Alabama wanted the Supreme Court to say you can go ahead. They didn't. They didn't make their decision until eight ten pm last night. The execution was scheduled for six pm, so they were waiting, literally waiting for word on whether or not they could go through with this thing.
00:01:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, Alabama seemed to put all of their execution eggs in the same basket. They didn't have a backup plan. It doesn't seem like robes. They were prepared, and maybe you can't. Maybe it's impossible to have two methods prepared. But they weren't ready with lethal injection, which is something they've been shying away from. Actually they don't like using it there in Alaba. And that's why we have nitrogen gas but ropes far far reaching implications with this case beyond Jeffrey Lee, who is still alive as we speak this morning, but romes. There are courts now, several courts, the Supreme Court included that has now said that this method is cruel and unusual. Nitrogen gas ropes. This is a moment for executions in this country. This is a moment for the death penalty.
00:02:28
Speaker 2: Yes, and a lot of folks people who are against the death penalty are celebrating and celebrated the Supreme Court's decision here because what is cruel and unusual? How long is too long to die? That was what some of the reports that were coming out of the executions that did take place in Alabama is. Starting in twenty twenty four, the state of Alabama has executed seven men. Louisiana has executed one. And according to the witnesses who were there in the rooms, they describe they describe pain and suffering, They describe ten minutes, even in one case they claimed thirty minutes for someone to die. And by looking at all of these examples over the past year and a half, two lower courts decided that it, in fact, this exact method of execution was cruel and unusual, and the Supreme Court agreed. Now, there were three dissenting justices and they didn't give a big reason why they were keeping the lower court's decision. And they didn't give a reason why they were dissenting. We just know who dissented.
00:03:31
Speaker 1: They didn't have a lot of time too, they didn't so write something out.
00:03:34
Speaker 2: Yes, this was an emergency ruling, and so yes, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsich noted their descent. They said they would have granted Alabama's request to overturn the lower courts and to allow Jeffrey Lee to be executed by nitrogen gas, but that was not the majority, and so there was a lot of reaction in the state of Alabama because they really, as you pointed out, all their eggs in one basket. They wanted this to go forward as is. They wanted to be able to continue to execute inmates using nitrogen gas.
00:04:09
Speaker 1: And again it's there. They have used it exclusively. I guess all of last year they used it. So they're up to how many in the country, seven or.
00:04:16
Speaker 2: Eight eight eight total? So, yes, Jeffrey Lee was going to be the ninth person in this country to be executed using nitrogen gas. And it's so interesting he chose this method. He switched he had lethal injection. Inmates get to choose their method of execution based on what's available in that state, and in the state of Alabama it was lethal injection and electrocution. Then in twenty eighteen, they started they didn't even have a way of implementing it. But they came up with this idea of using nitrogen gas, and they gave inmates one month to switch their preferred method of execution in the summer of twenty eighteen, and Jeffrey Lee switched his preferred method to nitrogen gas.
00:04:58
Speaker 1: Sure sounds good, Put a mask and I go to sleep. No big deal, that's what it was. But really wrote, we didn't know as much about it then.
00:05:05
Speaker 2: And then the account started coming in of what those inmates were experiencing while they were dying, and that word went back and trickled down to death row. Yeah, and all of a sudden, these guys are thinking, you know what, I don't think that's how I want to die. And that's exactly what happened with Jeffrey Lee. He filed an appeal and lo and behold, you got two courts, and now the Supreme Court saying, you know what, what you're saying makes a lot of sense.
00:05:31
Speaker 1: But robes the next thing, and the next thing in the next thing rogue. How can we ever say it's humane? How can you ever say it's not cruel and unusual to kill someone? This method is just? And again Robes. They were raving about this method. They thought this was gonna be the new good way to go. Put a mask on somebody's face and they essentially suffocate. Now, that's different than finding a vein. You don't have to worry about all that stuff. But Robes the process, they explain, just when you hear I don't hate the need to sit there and watch somebody die from nitrogen gas. When you tell me you deprive that person of oxygen while at the same time giving them something to breathe, what's happening the nitrogen oxygen. Nitrogen gas is replacing the oxygen in your blood cells. You're suffocating. Damn.
00:06:21
Speaker 2: That sounds horrible, yes, and by all accounts it is horrible to witness. We don't know, obviously what it's like to experience, because those men didn't come back from the dead to explain what the process felt like.
00:06:33
Speaker 1: Well, Grobes, what is going to be what's not cruel and unusual? Name a method. They got that big ass yellow electric chair that they say is still a legit method. That's not cruel and unusual.
00:06:45
Speaker 2: That's the problem. That's the question that people are asking now, and that is the question that states are going to have to figure out and they're going to have to make sure that their courts are going to back them up, because this is a total mess. Now. There was a lot of reaction to this last minute, last night decision by the Supreme Court. The Attorney General, of course, who had traveled to DC. He had a lot to say about the Supreme Court's ruling. He said, tonight's ruling is a miscarriage of justice, not for us, but for Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson, who Jeffrey Lee brutally and senselessly murdered tonight. I am keeping their families in mind, many of whom were prepared to witness the final act of justice be served. I want their families to know that we will never stop seeking justice for Jimmy and Elaine. The State is prepared to do whatever is necessary to see mister Lee's lawful sentence carried out.
00:07:39
Speaker 1: Lawful sentence is correct. You can disagree with it, but it was a lawful sentence. However, wasn't the one that the jury wanted him to have. Oh, this is a crazy story that this could be permitted, and I think, yeah, it gets in there to a lot of articles being read. But there's a headline this man is being executed when a jury said they didn't want him executed. Even that doesn't sit right, you know what?
00:08:06
Speaker 2: And there was an op ed in an Alabama paper, and I thought this was so telling because the logic behind. So a law was passed in twenty seventeen in the state of Alabama saying that what happened with Jeffrey Lee's case, where a jury votes for a life in prison sentence and the judge overrules, it, overrides the jury's recommendation and instead implements a death sentence, there's an't seven five.
00:08:35
Speaker 1: That's a lot of people that wanted him to stay.
00:08:37
Speaker 2: Seventy five wanted him life in prison without the possibility of parole. So this practice of judges overriding jury's recommendations was deemed illegal in twenty seventeen, and going forward that is no longer permitted. But for twenty seven men who are on death row in Alabama, that is why they are on death row because a judge overrode their jury's right commendation. So any case that happened before twenty seventeen, they didn't retroactively put this in place, and a lot of folks are saying that makes no sense. If you think it's wrong, if you think it should be illegal, why wouldn't any case also fall under that, no matter when it happened. If that's the belief, if that's the way we're moving forward, why wouldn't you extend that to the folks who now are sitting on death row.
00:09:24
Speaker 1: Make that argument. That would make sense. I would listen to that. That's a reasonable argument to make. I don't know, rob what the logical I don't know if a law was put in place or it was just always the case that a judge could override, Like, I don't know if they put a like, what was ever the logic behind that. I'm sitting here with the jury of my peers. What if they said I'm not guilty and the judge says, you know what, I think he's guilty. Yeah, it seems like that.
00:09:48
Speaker 2: It doesn't seem like that should none of that should be legal. That makes total sense. And look, Jeffrey Lee's attorneys also had a lot to say when the Supreme Court decisions came out, and they did reference that. This is what Lee's attorneys had to say the Supreme Court refused Alabama's demand to execute Jeffrey Lee tonight, his jury voted for life. Two courts ruled the method unconstitutional. Today the constitution prevailed. Now Governor Ivy can finish what the jury started, restore the jury's verdict of life without parole.
00:10:21
Speaker 1: Something's going on with the death penalty in the country. Baby, We've seen there are several we've had that we're shocked at the way the courts have reacted. We've been shocked the way Republican governors in some cases have commuted sentences. Maybe it's social media, babe, maybe it's Kim Kardashian getting involved in cases. But we have seen so many high profile death penalty cases that end up where we are now wondering. Now they're up in the air, what's going to happen? And at some point there this many questions, we got this much going on, just call off the execution. If there's this, if we have to fight this hard to get to the punishment, then it might be something wrong along the way.
00:10:58
Speaker 2: And I think a lot of folks believe that, and that is the truth. And look, just there is a like, I think that's a good point. What you're saying even the Kardashians being involved, Kim Kardashian having social media, having people really look at these cases, who is being executed, how long it's taking to execute them, how we're executing them, why we're even executing them. Look, Lee's attorneys put this on social media, so again the war of pr is real and alive. They posted a video of Lee telling his mother, calling his mother that he wouldn't die tonight. He said, you heard the news, She said, know what, baby what? His mother replied, I won, he said, And they put this up on social media, this video. Look, they know what they're doing. They want the public support, Yeah, and public.
00:11:46
Speaker 1: Support and to some degree sympathy, and there is some that should be extended for just life. The roads we got two people did at his hand and as much as people This is not a guilt or innocence argument here. This is not so robes as much as they put out, and they're showing in victory for us man. Victory for one side is put adding to the decades maybe of pain on the other side. Who was prepared, who knows where they traveled from, prepared, had to be there ready to watch his execution, And it's not happening. So now what do they do. They got to go back home and sit and wait, what's the next thing? What's the next thing? Yeah, Robes, that is torture for a family and that should not be lost on us. Yep.
00:12:34
Speaker 2: And that is exactly what the Attorney General wanted to get out to the public, to recognize and to remember not just the victims, but the victims' families who have been waiting for twenty eight years for justice. Now, I thought this was interesting. The spiritual advisor to many of the death row inmates and at least two of them who died by nitrogen hypoxia, that's what they call it. I thought. Reverend Jeff Hood said this about the Skotis decision. He said, this is the beginning of the end of the most horrific execution method this country has ever devised. He was there with his two inmates when they were executed using this method, And that is the question, is this the end of nitrogen gas? And when we come back, we're going to talk about the long term implications of this Supreme Court ruling and what Alabama's Attorney General is saying he is going to do next and welcome back everyone. We are talking about a shocking decision by the Supreme Court late last night eight pm stopping an execution from going forward because of the method that was being used nitrogen gas to execute death row inmate. Jeffrey Lee, now the Alabama Attorney General, traveled to DC tried to get the Supreme Court to allow them to go forward with this. I thought this was interesting, he said. If this ruling stands, it would be unprecedented in American history. Not only does it portend the first ever permanent band on a legislatively enacted method, but it would expand the concept of cruelty well beyond the bounds of the Eighth Amendment. While a risk of emotional distress might be relevant, the notion that a generally physical painless method nonetheless involves a level of severe pain akin to barbaric torture is outlandish. And his question is what method isn't cruel and unusual? Can can you use the standards they're applying to this?
00:14:34
Speaker 1: Name one name one? I mean, people go to sleep, and what are all the things they use for people to do assisted suicide? How do they do that?
00:14:43
Speaker 2: A lot of morphine? I think?
00:14:44
Speaker 1: I mean what I mean? Can we I don't know, Robes. This is not my lane. But they've been looking at this for a long time, and the best methods we've come up with hang somebody cut your head off, shoots you in the heart, electroccute, you put some drugs in you, or give you some gas. That's that's the.
00:15:00
Speaker 2: Best we've got. Because I don't know what Alabama's gonna do. Literally, they aren't. I'm sure they're not going to dust off their electric chair. And Governor Ivy she briefly paused the lethal injection because they had to investigate that because they were having to call off they had several incidents kind of like what we saw in Tennessee last month where they couldn't find a vein, so they couldn't go forward with the execution. They had several executions like that called off under her watch, and so she said enough, we're not doing lethal injection anymore. And that's why she pushed for the nitrogen gas method. Okay, and now that's not being allowed.
00:15:39
Speaker 1: You're you're allowed law in Alabama. Lets you use the electric chair, which hasn't been used in two thousand and two. Correct, right, that's the only method they suggested A judged it firing squad. Just go round up a couple of rifles as the dudes they can shoot, should be fine. It's not allowed in state of Alabama. You can move them over to South Carolina they kill them for are you gonna shoot them?
00:16:00
Speaker 2: I mean, they might have to legislatively allow for that. Because interestingly, in all but think about it, in all of the briefs from the courts, it was weird they were all promoting the firing squad thing. That's what Jeffrey Lee asked for. He said, I want a firing squad.
00:16:14
Speaker 1: But he knew he he is an option.
00:16:16
Speaker 2: But it's interesting because the judges who looked at all of the data and the witness accounts of what they were like, Yeah, firing squad actually looks like it would be the least painful. But so maybe if Alabama wants to actually execute inmates, and it has plenty of them on death row, they're gonna have to come up with another method. That's where we are.
00:16:38
Speaker 1: This is rod something's happening. Most people don't pay attention as closely to executions as we do. We've covered them for the past a year plus very closely. Something is happening with death penalty in this country, and Alabama is now at the center of it. They do not have a method to execute people in Alabama as we speak right now. It doesn't work. We know that chair.
00:17:02
Speaker 2: The chair doesn't work. Probably, I mean, I can't imagine they'd bring it back. That sounds pretty horrific.
00:17:06
Speaker 1: They don't want to use lethal injection. They do not own account. We don't want to use that, and now they're being told they can't use the other and you I jumped up because I'm thinking about Alabama. I was like, holy hell, could they quickly immediately pass legislation okaying firing squad possibly and had this thing ready to go.
00:17:25
Speaker 2: Possibly she'll sign it because and yes, because as much as folks have been calling on Governor Ivy to do something to commute his sentence to a life sentence, she once again, and I mean she has had plenty of comments this week about this case, and after the Supreme Court decision last night, she said, while I am disappointed the Supreme Court did not allow the state to proceed with Lee's chosen method of execution, I remain committed to ensuring that justice has ultimately served for his victims, So she claims she is going to push for this as well. We just don't have timing and we don't have method. Those two things are pretty important when it comes to setting up executions.
00:18:02
Speaker 1: He's living another day, and it gives us all a chance to understand a little better what we do in this country and what some states do. I think a lot of people would sit up and go, wait a minute. The jury voted him to go life in prison, and a judge said, nam, ignore you. And I'm like, even that it would come as a surprise to a lot of people that that I was surprised that that's allowed. But this is worth having the conversation. So this is fascinating.
00:18:29
Speaker 2: It is and we will see, you know. And it's interesting this is all coming the year after we had one of the largest number of executions in modern history. So maybe perhaps this is a backlash of sorts, a response to maybe just how quickly and swiftly we executed so many folks last year.
00:18:50
Speaker 1: We're slowing down, maybe slowing down a little bit and taking a different examination of these cases. But this is a double murderer who went into a pawn shop and brutally killed two people, got another and left her for dead. She survived. This is a brutal crime that families have been in ninety eight What are we up.
00:19:06
Speaker 2: Now, Yeah, it's twenty eight years.
00:19:08
Speaker 1: I believe eight years that we're up to. Twenty eight years A long time for a family to be waiting to have to just go back home, and they showed up waiting to it is a punishment.
00:19:18
Speaker 2: It's a lot of extremes and just the anxiety and just reliving this and waiting for justice's It seems cruel and unusual to the victims' families as well, but we will continue to keep our eye on what happens to inmate Jeffrey Lee. Until then, though, we always appreciate you listening to us. I'm Amy Roboch alongside TJ. Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks, it is Friday, June twelfth, and a man that was supposed to be executed last night is living another day. He might have another two, three, four, he might have who knows how long after the Supreme Court stepped in and kept the State of Alabama from executing Jeffrey Lee. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. When we hear Supreme we don't hear Supreme Court stepping into executions that often. They stepped in, but not quite to stop it.
00:00:33
Speaker 2: No, they just stopped the method of execution. And look, this was a big deal. This was down to the last minute. In fact, look, the State of Alabama had until six am, I believe, on Friday today to execute Jeffre Lee with the death warrants. So they actually sent their Attorney general and his staff up to DC to make these arguments to the Supreme Court. They wanted the Supreme Court to overturn two lower courts that this week said that the method of execution nitrogen gas was cruel and unusual and therefore likely unconstitutional, and they barred the State of Alabama from executing death row inmate Jeffrey Lee by using that method. They didn't stop the execution. They just stopped how he was going to be executed. And Alabama wanted the Supreme Court to say you can go ahead. They didn't. They didn't make their decision until eight ten pm last night. The execution was scheduled for six pm, so they were waiting, literally waiting for word on whether or not they could go through with this thing.
00:01:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, Alabama seemed to put all of their execution eggs in the same basket. They didn't have a backup plan. It doesn't seem like robes. They were prepared, and maybe you can't. Maybe it's impossible to have two methods prepared. But they weren't ready with lethal injection, which is something they've been shying away from. Actually they don't like using it there in Alaba. And that's why we have nitrogen gas but ropes far far reaching implications with this case beyond Jeffrey Lee, who is still alive as we speak this morning, but romes. There are courts now, several courts, the Supreme Court included that has now said that this method is cruel and unusual. Nitrogen gas ropes. This is a moment for executions in this country. This is a moment for the death penalty.
00:02:28
Speaker 2: Yes, and a lot of folks people who are against the death penalty are celebrating and celebrated the Supreme Court's decision here because what is cruel and unusual? How long is too long to die? That was what some of the reports that were coming out of the executions that did take place in Alabama is. Starting in twenty twenty four, the state of Alabama has executed seven men. Louisiana has executed one. And according to the witnesses who were there in the rooms, they describe they describe pain and suffering, They describe ten minutes, even in one case they claimed thirty minutes for someone to die. And by looking at all of these examples over the past year and a half, two lower courts decided that it, in fact, this exact method of execution was cruel and unusual, and the Supreme Court agreed. Now, there were three dissenting justices and they didn't give a big reason why they were keeping the lower court's decision. And they didn't give a reason why they were dissenting. We just know who dissented.
00:03:31
Speaker 1: They didn't have a lot of time too, they didn't so write something out.
00:03:34
Speaker 2: Yes, this was an emergency ruling, and so yes, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsich noted their descent. They said they would have granted Alabama's request to overturn the lower courts and to allow Jeffrey Lee to be executed by nitrogen gas, but that was not the majority, and so there was a lot of reaction in the state of Alabama because they really, as you pointed out, all their eggs in one basket. They wanted this to go forward as is. They wanted to be able to continue to execute inmates using nitrogen gas.
00:04:09
Speaker 1: And again it's there. They have used it exclusively. I guess all of last year they used it. So they're up to how many in the country, seven or.
00:04:16
Speaker 2: Eight eight eight total? So, yes, Jeffrey Lee was going to be the ninth person in this country to be executed using nitrogen gas. And it's so interesting he chose this method. He switched he had lethal injection. Inmates get to choose their method of execution based on what's available in that state, and in the state of Alabama it was lethal injection and electrocution. Then in twenty eighteen, they started they didn't even have a way of implementing it. But they came up with this idea of using nitrogen gas, and they gave inmates one month to switch their preferred method of execution in the summer of twenty eighteen, and Jeffrey Lee switched his preferred method to nitrogen gas.
00:04:58
Speaker 1: Sure sounds good, Put a mask and I go to sleep. No big deal, that's what it was. But really wrote, we didn't know as much about it then.
00:05:05
Speaker 2: And then the account started coming in of what those inmates were experiencing while they were dying, and that word went back and trickled down to death row. Yeah, and all of a sudden, these guys are thinking, you know what, I don't think that's how I want to die. And that's exactly what happened with Jeffrey Lee. He filed an appeal and lo and behold, you got two courts, and now the Supreme Court saying, you know what, what you're saying makes a lot of sense.
00:05:31
Speaker 1: But robes the next thing, and the next thing in the next thing rogue. How can we ever say it's humane? How can you ever say it's not cruel and unusual to kill someone? This method is just? And again Robes. They were raving about this method. They thought this was gonna be the new good way to go. Put a mask on somebody's face and they essentially suffocate. Now, that's different than finding a vein. You don't have to worry about all that stuff. But Robes the process, they explain, just when you hear I don't hate the need to sit there and watch somebody die from nitrogen gas. When you tell me you deprive that person of oxygen while at the same time giving them something to breathe, what's happening the nitrogen oxygen. Nitrogen gas is replacing the oxygen in your blood cells. You're suffocating. Damn.
00:06:21
Speaker 2: That sounds horrible, yes, and by all accounts it is horrible to witness. We don't know, obviously what it's like to experience, because those men didn't come back from the dead to explain what the process felt like.
00:06:33
Speaker 1: Well, Grobes, what is going to be what's not cruel and unusual? Name a method. They got that big ass yellow electric chair that they say is still a legit method. That's not cruel and unusual.
00:06:45
Speaker 2: That's the problem. That's the question that people are asking now, and that is the question that states are going to have to figure out and they're going to have to make sure that their courts are going to back them up, because this is a total mess. Now. There was a lot of reaction to this last minute, last night decision by the Supreme Court. The Attorney General, of course, who had traveled to DC. He had a lot to say about the Supreme Court's ruling. He said, tonight's ruling is a miscarriage of justice, not for us, but for Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson, who Jeffrey Lee brutally and senselessly murdered tonight. I am keeping their families in mind, many of whom were prepared to witness the final act of justice be served. I want their families to know that we will never stop seeking justice for Jimmy and Elaine. The State is prepared to do whatever is necessary to see mister Lee's lawful sentence carried out.
00:07:39
Speaker 1: Lawful sentence is correct. You can disagree with it, but it was a lawful sentence. However, wasn't the one that the jury wanted him to have. Oh, this is a crazy story that this could be permitted, and I think, yeah, it gets in there to a lot of articles being read. But there's a headline this man is being executed when a jury said they didn't want him executed. Even that doesn't sit right, you know what?
00:08:06
Speaker 2: And there was an op ed in an Alabama paper, and I thought this was so telling because the logic behind. So a law was passed in twenty seventeen in the state of Alabama saying that what happened with Jeffrey Lee's case, where a jury votes for a life in prison sentence and the judge overrules, it, overrides the jury's recommendation and instead implements a death sentence, there's an't seven five.
00:08:35
Speaker 1: That's a lot of people that wanted him to stay.
00:08:37
Speaker 2: Seventy five wanted him life in prison without the possibility of parole. So this practice of judges overriding jury's recommendations was deemed illegal in twenty seventeen, and going forward that is no longer permitted. But for twenty seven men who are on death row in Alabama, that is why they are on death row because a judge overrode their jury's right commendation. So any case that happened before twenty seventeen, they didn't retroactively put this in place, and a lot of folks are saying that makes no sense. If you think it's wrong, if you think it should be illegal, why wouldn't any case also fall under that, no matter when it happened. If that's the belief, if that's the way we're moving forward, why wouldn't you extend that to the folks who now are sitting on death row.
00:09:24
Speaker 1: Make that argument. That would make sense. I would listen to that. That's a reasonable argument to make. I don't know, rob what the logical I don't know if a law was put in place or it was just always the case that a judge could override, Like, I don't know if they put a like, what was ever the logic behind that. I'm sitting here with the jury of my peers. What if they said I'm not guilty and the judge says, you know what, I think he's guilty. Yeah, it seems like that.
00:09:48
Speaker 2: It doesn't seem like that should none of that should be legal. That makes total sense. And look, Jeffrey Lee's attorneys also had a lot to say when the Supreme Court decisions came out, and they did reference that. This is what Lee's attorneys had to say the Supreme Court refused Alabama's demand to execute Jeffrey Lee tonight, his jury voted for life. Two courts ruled the method unconstitutional. Today the constitution prevailed. Now Governor Ivy can finish what the jury started, restore the jury's verdict of life without parole.
00:10:21
Speaker 1: Something's going on with the death penalty in the country. Baby, We've seen there are several we've had that we're shocked at the way the courts have reacted. We've been shocked the way Republican governors in some cases have commuted sentences. Maybe it's social media, babe, maybe it's Kim Kardashian getting involved in cases. But we have seen so many high profile death penalty cases that end up where we are now wondering. Now they're up in the air, what's going to happen? And at some point there this many questions, we got this much going on, just call off the execution. If there's this, if we have to fight this hard to get to the punishment, then it might be something wrong along the way.
00:10:58
Speaker 2: And I think a lot of folks believe that, and that is the truth. And look, just there is a like, I think that's a good point. What you're saying even the Kardashians being involved, Kim Kardashian having social media, having people really look at these cases, who is being executed, how long it's taking to execute them, how we're executing them, why we're even executing them. Look, Lee's attorneys put this on social media, so again the war of pr is real and alive. They posted a video of Lee telling his mother, calling his mother that he wouldn't die tonight. He said, you heard the news, She said, know what, baby what? His mother replied, I won, he said, And they put this up on social media, this video. Look, they know what they're doing. They want the public support, Yeah, and public.
00:11:46
Speaker 1: Support and to some degree sympathy, and there is some that should be extended for just life. The roads we got two people did at his hand and as much as people This is not a guilt or innocence argument here. This is not so robes as much as they put out, and they're showing in victory for us man. Victory for one side is put adding to the decades maybe of pain on the other side. Who was prepared, who knows where they traveled from, prepared, had to be there ready to watch his execution, And it's not happening. So now what do they do. They got to go back home and sit and wait, what's the next thing? What's the next thing? Yeah, Robes, that is torture for a family and that should not be lost on us. Yep.
00:12:34
Speaker 2: And that is exactly what the Attorney General wanted to get out to the public, to recognize and to remember not just the victims, but the victims' families who have been waiting for twenty eight years for justice. Now, I thought this was interesting. The spiritual advisor to many of the death row inmates and at least two of them who died by nitrogen hypoxia, that's what they call it. I thought. Reverend Jeff Hood said this about the Skotis decision. He said, this is the beginning of the end of the most horrific execution method this country has ever devised. He was there with his two inmates when they were executed using this method, And that is the question, is this the end of nitrogen gas? And when we come back, we're going to talk about the long term implications of this Supreme Court ruling and what Alabama's Attorney General is saying he is going to do next and welcome back everyone. We are talking about a shocking decision by the Supreme Court late last night eight pm stopping an execution from going forward because of the method that was being used nitrogen gas to execute death row inmate. Jeffrey Lee, now the Alabama Attorney General, traveled to DC tried to get the Supreme Court to allow them to go forward with this. I thought this was interesting, he said. If this ruling stands, it would be unprecedented in American history. Not only does it portend the first ever permanent band on a legislatively enacted method, but it would expand the concept of cruelty well beyond the bounds of the Eighth Amendment. While a risk of emotional distress might be relevant, the notion that a generally physical painless method nonetheless involves a level of severe pain akin to barbaric torture is outlandish. And his question is what method isn't cruel and unusual? Can can you use the standards they're applying to this?
00:14:34
Speaker 1: Name one name one? I mean, people go to sleep, and what are all the things they use for people to do assisted suicide? How do they do that?
00:14:43
Speaker 2: A lot of morphine? I think?
00:14:44
Speaker 1: I mean what I mean? Can we I don't know, Robes. This is not my lane. But they've been looking at this for a long time, and the best methods we've come up with hang somebody cut your head off, shoots you in the heart, electroccute, you put some drugs in you, or give you some gas. That's that's the.
00:15:00
Speaker 2: Best we've got. Because I don't know what Alabama's gonna do. Literally, they aren't. I'm sure they're not going to dust off their electric chair. And Governor Ivy she briefly paused the lethal injection because they had to investigate that because they were having to call off they had several incidents kind of like what we saw in Tennessee last month where they couldn't find a vein, so they couldn't go forward with the execution. They had several executions like that called off under her watch, and so she said enough, we're not doing lethal injection anymore. And that's why she pushed for the nitrogen gas method. Okay, and now that's not being allowed.
00:15:39
Speaker 1: You're you're allowed law in Alabama. Lets you use the electric chair, which hasn't been used in two thousand and two. Correct, right, that's the only method they suggested A judged it firing squad. Just go round up a couple of rifles as the dudes they can shoot, should be fine. It's not allowed in state of Alabama. You can move them over to South Carolina they kill them for are you gonna shoot them?
00:16:00
Speaker 2: I mean, they might have to legislatively allow for that. Because interestingly, in all but think about it, in all of the briefs from the courts, it was weird they were all promoting the firing squad thing. That's what Jeffrey Lee asked for. He said, I want a firing squad.
00:16:14
Speaker 1: But he knew he he is an option.
00:16:16
Speaker 2: But it's interesting because the judges who looked at all of the data and the witness accounts of what they were like, Yeah, firing squad actually looks like it would be the least painful. But so maybe if Alabama wants to actually execute inmates, and it has plenty of them on death row, they're gonna have to come up with another method. That's where we are.
00:16:38
Speaker 1: This is rod something's happening. Most people don't pay attention as closely to executions as we do. We've covered them for the past a year plus very closely. Something is happening with death penalty in this country, and Alabama is now at the center of it. They do not have a method to execute people in Alabama as we speak right now. It doesn't work. We know that chair.
00:17:02
Speaker 2: The chair doesn't work. Probably, I mean, I can't imagine they'd bring it back. That sounds pretty horrific.
00:17:06
Speaker 1: They don't want to use lethal injection. They do not own account. We don't want to use that, and now they're being told they can't use the other and you I jumped up because I'm thinking about Alabama. I was like, holy hell, could they quickly immediately pass legislation okaying firing squad possibly and had this thing ready to go.
00:17:25
Speaker 2: Possibly she'll sign it because and yes, because as much as folks have been calling on Governor Ivy to do something to commute his sentence to a life sentence, she once again, and I mean she has had plenty of comments this week about this case, and after the Supreme Court decision last night, she said, while I am disappointed the Supreme Court did not allow the state to proceed with Lee's chosen method of execution, I remain committed to ensuring that justice has ultimately served for his victims, So she claims she is going to push for this as well. We just don't have timing and we don't have method. Those two things are pretty important when it comes to setting up executions.
00:18:02
Speaker 1: He's living another day, and it gives us all a chance to understand a little better what we do in this country and what some states do. I think a lot of people would sit up and go, wait a minute. The jury voted him to go life in prison, and a judge said, nam, ignore you. And I'm like, even that it would come as a surprise to a lot of people that that I was surprised that that's allowed. But this is worth having the conversation. So this is fascinating.
00:18:29
Speaker 2: It is and we will see, you know. And it's interesting this is all coming the year after we had one of the largest number of executions in modern history. So maybe perhaps this is a backlash of sorts, a response to maybe just how quickly and swiftly we executed so many folks last year.
00:18:50
Speaker 1: We're slowing down, maybe slowing down a little bit and taking a different examination of these cases. But this is a double murderer who went into a pawn shop and brutally killed two people, got another and left her for dead. She survived. This is a brutal crime that families have been in ninety eight What are we up.
00:19:06
Speaker 2: Now, Yeah, it's twenty eight years.
00:19:08
Speaker 1: I believe eight years that we're up to. Twenty eight years A long time for a family to be waiting to have to just go back home, and they showed up waiting to it is a punishment.
00:19:18
Speaker 2: It's a lot of extremes and just the anxiety and just reliving this and waiting for justice's It seems cruel and unusual to the victims' families as well, but we will continue to keep our eye on what happens to inmate Jeffrey Lee. Until then, though, we always appreciate you listening to us. I'm Amy Roboch alongside TJ. Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.