Despite Serious Concerns about Trial’s Fairness and Anthony Boyd’s Innocence, Alabama Plans to Execute Him Using Nitrogen Gas

Anthony Boyd is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Alabama on October 23, 2025, for his role in the 1993 kid­nap­ping and mur­der of Gregory ​“New York” Huguley. Mr. Boyd was con­vict­ed based sole­ly on eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny with no phys­i­cal evi­dence link­ing him to the crime, and he has main­tained his inno­cence. Alabama will exe­cute Mr. Boyd using nitro­gen gas, the sev­enth time state has used this con­tro­ver­sial method since January 2024, when the state exe­cut­ed Kenneth Smith in the first-ever exe­cu­tion of its kind. 

Mr. Boyd’s orig­i­nal court-appoint­ed attor­ney, William Willingham, was paid the statu­to­ry capped fee of just $1,000 for his work rep­re­sent­ing Mr. Boyd. Professional stan­dards and empir­i­cal stud­ies have long linked low coun­sel com­pen­sa­tion to inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Both the 1989 and 2003 American Bar Association Guidelines clear­ly state that it is ​“improp­er” for attor­neys like Mr. Willingham to be paid flat fees or with lump-sum con­tracts. Mr. Willingham, whose prac­tice includ­ed crim­i­nal defense, juve­nile work, and divorce cas­es, had pre­vi­ous­ly worked in the local dis­trict attorney’s office under pros­e­cu­tor Robert Rumsey, who han­dled the pros­e­cu­tion of Mr. Boyd. 

Before tri­al, Mr. Willingham expressed con­cerns to the tri­al judge, Judge Jerry Fielding, about his abil­i­ty to pre­pare ade­quate­ly to defend Mr. Boyd. During a pre-tri­al con­fer­ence, Mr. Willingham stat­ed that he did not want to be appoint­ed to Mr. Boyd’s case because he need­ed to pri­or­i­tize high­er-pay­ing work. He recalled telling Judge Fielding he didn’t have any time to pre­pare for it, adding ​“plus it gets to be pret­ty much pro bono work after a cer­tain point.” When Mr. Willingham learned he would have just over a month to review evi­dence in the case revealed dur­ing pre-tri­al dis­cov­ery, he object­ed. Judge Fielding dis­agreed, call­ing one month ​“a rea­son­able length of time” for Mr. Willingham to pre­pare for Mr. Boyd’s capital trial. 

Capital cas­es are both time and resource inten­sive, requir­ing a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time for defense coun­sel to thor­ough­ly and inde­pen­dent­ly inves­ti­gate the crime charged and also the life expe­ri­ences of their client for sen­tenc­ing. Competent attor­neys spend thou­sands of hours prepar­ing for tri­al, but as Mr. Willingham not­ed, his capped com­pen­sa­tion meant he would not be com­pen­sat­ed if he had invest­ed the nec­es­sary time to prepare effectively. 

During Mr. Boyd’s tri­al, Mr. Willingham’s poor prepa­ra­tion was clear: he did not obtain grand jury tes­ti­mo­ny until a week before tri­al and did not sub­poe­na sev­er­al wit­ness­es. Mr. Willingham also failed to inter­view pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es, and instead relied on notes from DA Rumsey, his for­mer boss, to deter­mine how they would tes­ti­fy. According to appel­late coun­sel for Mr. Boyd, Mr. Willingham also failed to call sev­er­al wit­ness­es who could have cor­rob­o­rat­ed Mr. Boyd’s ali­bi that he was at a birth­day par­ty in a neigh­bor­ing town and spent the night at a motel with his then-girl­friend the night that Mr. Huguley was killed. 

The prosecution’s case relied heav­i­ly on tes­ti­mo­ny from one of Mr. Boyd’s code­fen­dants, Dwinaune Cox, who agreed to tes­ti­fy against Mr. Boyd and his oth­er code­fen­dants in exchange for a less­er sen­tence. Mr. Cox was the only wit­ness to tes­ti­fy about what hap­pened on the evening of Mr. Huguley’s mur­der and con­tained incon­sis­ten­cies between his ini­tial state­ment and his June 1994 state­ment made as part of his plea deal. Mr. Cox ini­tial­ly claimed he remained in the van with his code­fen­dants as they rode to where Mr. Huguley was killed. His sto­ry lat­er changed, with Mr. Cox stat­ing he rode to the loca­tion where Mr. Huguley was killed by him­self and met up there with his code­fen­dants. When asked about this incon­sis­ten­cy, Mr. Cox stat­ed he did not orig­i­nal­ly have a plea agree­ment, ​“and then when I signed the agree­ment [my lawyer] told me that if I tes­ti­fy false­ly and get caught in a lie, that the agree­ment could be breached. So, that’s when I changed my sto­ry.” Other wit­ness­es pro­vid­ed tes­ti­mo­ny that dif­fered in key details, includ­ing whether Shawn Ingram, one of the indi­vid­u­als charged with Mr. Huguley’s mur­der, had a gun and if they saw Mr. Boyd in the van that was used in the com­mis­sion of the crime. One wit­ness who tes­ti­fied to see­ing both Mr. Ingram and Mr. Boyd was con­tra­dict­ed by her aunt, who tes­ti­fied that the wit­ness had been at her house all day, miles from where Mr. Huguley was allegedly abducted. 

The state’s med­ical exam­in­er, Joseph Embry, tes­ti­fied that there was no phys­i­cal evi­dence link­ing Mr. Boyd to the crime. Dr. Embry also tes­ti­fied that evi­dence of duct tape was found on Mr. Huguley’s face and right fore­arm, but not on his legs, call­ing the prosecution’s the­o­ry of Mr. Boyd’s involve­ment into ques­tion. Fingerprints col­lect­ed from evi­dence found near the crime scene also did not match Mr. Boyd. 

After three days of tri­al, Mr. Boyd was found guilty and sen­tenced to death by a jury vote of 10 – 2. Alabama and Florida are the only states that allow non-unan­i­mous juries to impose sen­tences of death. Mr. Boyd was tried in Talladega County, which dur­ing the 1980s and 1990s had the high­est per capi­ta rate of death sen­tences in the nation. The coun­ty, then home to about 74,000 peo­ple, account­ed for about 10% of Alabama’s death row pop­u­la­tion at that time. District Attorney Robert Rumsey, who pros­e­cut­ed Mr. Boyd, sent 12 peo­ple to death row dur­ing his tenure in office. A 2001 Birmingham Post-Herald inves­ti­ga­tion found that half of those sen­tenced to death under DA Rumsey were Black. 

In 2018, the Alabama leg­is­la­ture passed a bill autho­riz­ing the use of nitro­gen gas in exe­cu­tions and gave death row pris­on­ers 30 days to des­ig­nate whether they would be exe­cut­ed by nitro­gen gas or lethal injec­tion. Mr. Boyd ini­tial­ly chose nitro­gen gas as his exe­cu­tion method; how­ev­er, he has since reversed this deci­sion, assert­ing he lacked suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion to make an informed decision. 

His legal team filed a chal­lenge in July 2025 con­test­ing Alabama’s use of nitro­gen gas on two con­sti­tu­tion­al grounds: that the exe­cu­tion method itself con­sti­tutes cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment pro­hib­it­ed by the Eighth Amendment; and that the state’s with­hold­ing of an unredact­ed pro­to­col denies him due process. The chal­lenge focused large­ly on evi­dence from the state’s pre­vi­ous nitro­gen gas exe­cu­tions, as well as one car­ried out in Louisiana. In each case, inde­pen­dent media wit­ness­es stat­ed that they saw the pris­on­ers gasp for air and shake vio­lent­ly against restraints. In his legal fil­ings, as required, Mr. Boyd prof­fered alter­na­tive meth­ods of exe­cu­tion, includ­ing the fir­ing squad, argu­ing that his asth­ma and ver­ti­go increase chances of com­pli­ca­tion with nitro­gen gas. A fed­er­al court heard Mr. Boyd’s claims in an evi­den­tiary hear­ing in September 2025, where defense coun­sel pre­sent­ed a dozen wit­ness­es to tes­ti­fy about the cru­el and unusu­al nature of exe­cu­tions using nitro­gen gas. The state, fol­low­ing pre­vi­ous state­ments, told the court that the method was work­ing as intend­ed, and that Mr. Boyd had ear­li­er agreed to this method. 

In ear­ly October, Chief U.S. District Judge Emily Marks denied Mr. Boyd’s chal­lenge and request for a stay of exe­cu­tion. In her denial, Judge Marks wrote that Mr. Boyd would be unlike­ly to win on the mer­its of his claims, and that he was ​“inex­cus­ably delayed” in fil­ing his suit. Judge Marks not­ed that ​“the Court does not doubt that a per­son con­scious­ly deprived of oxy­gen even for two min­utes under the pro­to­col expe­ri­ences dis­com­fort, pan­ic, and emo­tion­al dis­tress,” how­ev­er, much of this pain ​“is pain which the inmate would inevitably expe­ri­ence because he knows he will soon die — an expe­ri­ence which attends every exe­cu­tion and can­not be avoid­ed.” She also not­ed that the prop­er inquiry into the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s use of nitro­gen gas would have ques­tioned whether the method “’super­adds’ pain beyond what’s need­ed to effec­tu­ate a death sentence.” 

Counsel for Mr. Boyd appealed this deci­sion to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which denied his request for a stay of execution.