Muslim civil rights and advocacy group commends Supreme Court dissent and reiterates call for suspension of death penalty due to risk of wrongful convictions and evidence of racial disparities in application.
The Alabama office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-AL), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today called on the State of Alabama to drop the use of nitrogen gas as an execution method after incarcaree Anthony Boyd was reportedly conscious and visibly suffering for as long as 15 minutes.
CAIR also commended a Supreme Court dissent led by Associate Justice Sonya Sotomayor that noted such incidents have repeatedly occurred and argued that the Court should have approved Boyd’s request for execution by firing squad.
Anthony Boyd, who was on death row for murder and maintained his innocence in his final remarks, was executed with a nitrogen gas mask last night. According to witnesses, he thrashed against his restraints and convulsed during the execution, his eyes rolled back into his head, and he gasped for air for 15 minutes until he died.
In a minority opinion dissenting from the Supreme Court’s decision to let the execution move forward, Supreme Court Justices Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Katanji Brown Jackson wrote that “allowing the nitrogen hypoxia experiment to continue despite mounting and unbroken evidence that it violates the Constitution by inflicting unnecessary suffering fails to ‘protec[t] [the] dignity’ of ‘the Nation we have been, the Nation we are, and the Nation we aspire to be.’” Boyd was the eighth person to be executed by nitrogen gas.
SEE: In Alabama, Anthony Boyd subjected to the longest nitrogen execution in history.
In a statement, CAIR-Alabama Staff Attorney Britton O’Shields said:
“We call on the State of Alabama to stop using nitrogen gas to carry out the death penalty in the wake of this latest horrific, botched execution. Nitrogen gas has clearly and repeatedly resulted in cruel executions that needlessly prolong the person’s suffering. The fact that American states continue to use this nitrogen to slowly suffocate people to death is unconscionable. Alabama should lead the way in discontinuing this barbaric form of execution.”
In a statement, CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said:
“We welcome the Supreme Court minority’s prescient and moving dissenting opinion in this case, which powerfully recounted botched executions using nitrogen gas and correctly predicted the horror that would unfold during this latest execution. We also again call on states and courts to suspend the use of the death penalty nationwide as long as racial disparities continue to exist in its application and a substantial risk of wrongful convictions persists. As the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said long ago in a universal maxim, ‘It is better to make making a mistake in forgiving than in punishing.'”
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CONTACT: A. Britton O’Shields, Staff Attorney – Alabama Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Alabama), aoshields@cair.com, 205-206-6399, 205-616-0733; CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell, 404-285-9530, e-Mitchell@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, ihooper@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Manager Ismail Allison, 202-770-6280, iallison@cair.com