Law360 (September 18, 2026, 12:20 PM EDT) -- Jeffery Lee, a 49-year-old Alabama prisoner on death row who had elected to be executed via nitrogen gas — a method a federal judge found earlier this year would violate his constitutional rights — was executed by lethal injection Thursday evening, after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his bid for an emergency stay.

Lee was pronounced dead at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, at 6:22 p.m. Central, according to the office of Gov. Kay Ivey, following the administration of three drugs. He had been on death row after a trial judge overrode a jury's vote to sentence Lee to life in prison.

After the execution was carried out, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall released a statement saying, "Justice was finally served."

Lee was convicted of the 1998 murders of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson, who he killed with a sawed-off shotgun during a pawn shop robbery.

Lee's execution was initially scheduled for earlier this summer. In June, a federal district court issued a permanent injunction against the state's nitrogen protocol, ruling it violates the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment.

But Lee's legal victory was fleeting. The state moved quickly to reauthorize his execution, this time indicating it would kill him via lethal injection.

Lee had previously been engaged in litigation over the state's use of lethal injection. When the Alabama government in 2018 authorized nitrogen hypoxia — in which a mask is strapped to a prisoner's face, and the person breathes nitrogen, loses consciousness and suffocates to death — as an approved method of execution, Lee elected to be executed by this method. He and the state agreed his lethal injection challenge was moot, and a federal judge dismissed the case.

At the time, the state's nitrogen protocol was still undeveloped. As the state began carrying out nitrogen executions, eyewitnesses described prisoners thrashing against restraints and remaining conscious long after the state said they would. Lee then challenged the protocol as unconstitutional.

When Alabama once again moved to execute Lee via lethal injection, Lee argued that when he initially agreed to the nitrogen protocol, the state had agreed not to execute him via lethal injunction, and this agreement should still hold even if the nitrogen hypoxia protocol was disallowed.

A federal court determined it did not have jurisdiction to parse the questions of state law that were presented, and Lee turned to the state courts. He again argued Alabama did not have the authority to carry out his death sentence via lethal injection.

"The state cannot revert to lethal injection unless the method of nitrogen hypoxia — and not simply the protocol implementing it — is held unconstitutional by the Alabama Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court, or the Eleventh Circuit if certiorari is denied. That has not happened. Mr. Lee's timely election of nitrogen hypoxia therefore remains operative," Lee contended in an expedited motion for summary judgment filed in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County on Aug. 14.

Lee argued the state's nitrogen protocol, not the method of being executed with nitrogen, had been deemed unconstitutional.

The state responded by arguing Lee's legal efforts were a "Rule 32 petition in disguise," referring to a request for post-conviction relief. Accordingly, Alabama argued, "the court should either dismiss the claim outright or else transfer the matter to the Dallas County circuit court as a successive Rule 32 petition."

The state prevailed when the Montgomery County circuit court on Sept. 7 determined Lee's claims constituted a "collateral attack" on his death sentence. Lee then brought his case to the Alabama Supreme Court.

"He has a clear legal right to have this action adjudicated as a civil action because he seeks no relief from his conviction or death sentence. He asks only what Alabama law permits the state to do in carrying out his sentence," Lee told the state high court in a Sept. 9 petition for writ of mandamus.

"The equities favor the state," Alabama said in a reply brief two days later. "Lee faces no irreparable harm in receiving the punishment he deserves by lethal injection."

Robert Dunham, the director of the Death Penalty Policy Project, called that claim "objectively ludicrous."

"By now, everybody who has open eyes and an open mind understands that the death penalty is arbitrary and is not based on notions of fairness or justice," Dunham told Law360. "The political presumption is that we're the state; we get to kill you no matter what, and the law and normal principles of judicial review is not an obstacle to that."

The Alabama Supreme Court denied the petition for mandamus in a brief, one-page order Tuesday that dismissed all pending motions as moot.

As Lee waited for the Alabama Supreme Court's ruling, he also filed an emergency application for a stay of execution and petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court.

"The question of whether a state should be bound by the representations it makes is of paramount public importance," Lee argued in the Sept. 11 writ of certiorari, noting that "proceeding with normal appellate practice means Mr. Lee will be executed long before this question is addressed."

Days later, Lee contended in a reply brief he had "a fair prospect of reversal and is likely to succeed on the merits of his judicial and equitable estoppel claims."

"The state benefited from dismissal of Mr. Lee's lethal injection action without litigating its merits, while he lost the opportunity to litigate that claim in the ordinary course based on the state's now-abandoned representation," Lee argued. "A stay would preserve meaningful review without preventing the state from ultimately carrying out Mr. Lee's sentence."

As Lee's execution drew nearer, Ivey quashed any hopes she would grant a reprieve. Shortly after 1 p.m. EST, Thursday, a spokesperson for Ivey's office told Law360, "The governor has no plans to grant clemency at this time."

"We are devastated that the U.S. Supreme Court and the Alabama Supreme Court have declined to stay Jeffery Lee's execution," Lee's attorneys from Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP said in a statement. "Mr. Lee spent his decades on death row devoting himself to his faith, serving in leadership roles as a preacher and church teacher."

During those decades, the judicial process that sent Lee to death row changed.

The jury in Lee's trial had recommended a life sentence without the possibility of parole in a 7-5 vote, but the trial judge overseeing the case imposed a death sentence through judicial override.

In 2017, Alabama became the last U.S. state to abolish the practice of judicial override, but did not apply the law retroactively. Two dozen people remain on death row in the state because of sentences handed down via judicial override.

Rights groups are urging Ivey to spare the lives of those two dozen people by commuting their sentences. In response to questions sent by Law360 on Thursday, her office signaled she did not currently intend to do so.

"The law ending 'judicial override' passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Ivey, made very clear that it would not apply retroactively. It preserved all existing death sentences, ensuring promises are kept to victims' loved ones," a spokesperson told Law360.

--Editing by Lakshna Mehta.

For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.