Recommendations of the Editorial team
In January 2024, pastor Reverend Jeff Hood in Alabama witnessed the first nitrogen execution in U.S. history. It was a harrowing experience, he says – like a goldfish being pulled out of the water, only infinitely worse. Last week, however, the US Supreme Court upheld a decision blocking the execution of a man in Alabama because the use of nitrogen gas was considered cruel and unusual punishment. This ruling sets a precedent which could effectively prevent this method among prisoners in Alabama in the future.
Jeffrey Lee was scheduled to be executed July 11 for a 1998 double murder, but objected to the relatively new form of execution – a form of gas asphyxiation – that has led to slow, painful deaths for some inmates, although the method is touted as more humane than others.
“The last thing I could have ever imagined was becoming an expert in nitrogen executions,” Hood tells Rolling Stone. Nevertheless, as chaplain to prisoner Kenneth Smith, he was present at America’s first execution by nitrogen in January 2024. “When I first met Kenny, he made me promise to tell his story to the world. I was the first to tell the world what had just happened. I felt that was a huge responsibility – and that responsibility hasn’t diminished.”
First witness to a new method
Hood became a chaplain in 2022 after the Supreme Court ruled that prisoners could have such a companion when they went to their deaths. He had already witnessed several executions when Smith died – but this time, for the first time, he also feared for his own life, because the procedure was still untested and it was not impossible that the poisonous gas could penetrate into the observation room. “I think it is important to note that this is the first time in human history that people who are not scheduled to be executed are also at risk of being executed,” Hood said at the time.
The reverend was physically unscathed, but mentally he had to watch a friend die in an agonizing eight-minute fight, his face twitching as if “a million ants were crawling under his skin,” as Hood describes it. Since then, eight people have been executed this way, seven of them in Alabama alone; five US states allow the method.
Hood also attended Anthony Boyd’s execution in October 2025, which he said lasted 18 minutes. “You feel like dirt, sitting there, trying to pray and endure it all,” he says. “And you know you’re just a wave of your hand away from ripping that mask off his face.” Boyd was the last man to die by nitrogen gas in Alabama before Jeffrey Lee successfully challenged his method of execution this month.
Billboards against suffocation
Over the past two and a half years, Hood has continually drawn attention to the horrors of this method – even as politicians and skeptics have claimed that it is more humane than lethal injection. He wrote a book, held press conferences wearing the mask used in executions, and had posters erected throughout Alabama reading “Thou Shalt Not Suffocate.”
After the Supreme Court ruling, he was overwhelmed. “I felt validated,” he says. “Like, ‘You assholes put me through this. Tormented me. Gave me fucking nightmares for two and a half years.’ It’s been an incredible journey and of course it’s not quite over yet – but we’re seeing the beginning of the end.” Hood now hopes that other states will follow Alabama’s example and that those states that do not yet use this method of execution will take this as a warning.
“It’s not just about telling their stories,” Hood says of Boyd and Smith. “It’s about documenting this so that future generations understand the horror that comes with suffocating people. It’s horrific, it’s torture, and it’s beneath human dignity.”
Executions at record high
However, his work is far from done. Next week, Hood will attend his thirteenth execution – Dusty Spencer, the oldest man ever executed in Florida. What’s more, the US appears to be expanding executions despite a historic low in public support for the death penalty. The Death Penalty Information Center reports that a total of 47 people were executed in 2025 – the most in ten years. This year there are already fifteen.
President Donald Trump has always been a vocal supporter of the death penalty. Joe Biden ended his term by pardoning the majority of those sentenced to death in federal prisons, a decision that Trump has since hastily sought to reverse. His Justice Department reinstated the firing squad for federal prisoners in April 2026; Several states are now also using this method, which was once considered outdated. Trump also reinstated lethal injection in federal prisons, a protocol that Biden had suspended before the end of his term.