An Alabama death row inmate set to die Thursday asked the state’s governor to meet with him “before an innocent man is executed.”
Anthony Boyd, 53, is scheduled to be executed Thursday evening by nitrogen gas at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility. A jury convicted Boyd of capital murder for the 1993 burning death of Gregory Huguley in Talladega County. Prosecutors said Huguley was burned alive over a $200 drug debt.
Boyd, who has maintained he did not commit the crime, made the request to meet with Gov. Kay Ivey, during a news conference hosted by the Execution Intervention Project and his spiritual adviser the Rev. Jeff Hood.
“Before an innocent man is executed, come sit down with me and have a conversation with the guy you deemed one of the worst of the worst,” Boyd said in a recorded message played at the news conference.
Boyd said if Ivey feels he is being deceptive or evasive during that meeting, “then please carry out the sentence.”
“If not, then I ask you to stay this execution, to stop this execution to have my case fully and fairly investigated,” Boyd said.
Mike Lewis, a spokesman for Ivey, said the governor personally reviews each case in which an execution has been ordered and set.
“At this point, however, we have not seen any recent court filings disputing Mr. Boyd’s guilt in the horrific, burning-alive murder of Gregory Huguley. Nor have we received a clemency submission to such an effect,” Lewis wrote in an emailed response.
He said the governor’s review does not include one-on-one meetings with inmates and called Boyd’s request “especially unworkable.”
The Republican governor has halted one execution since she took office in 2017.
Huguley’s burned body was found Aug. 1, 1993, in a rural Talladega County ball field.
Prosecutors said Boyd was one of four men who kidnapped Huguley the prior evening. A prosecution witness at the trial testified as part of a plea agreement and said that Boyd taped Huguley’s feet together before another man doused him in gasoline and set him on fire.
AP
But Boyd’s lawyers insisted their client was innocent, introducing witnesses during the trial who testified that he had attended a birthday party the night Huguley was killed and slept at a hotel with his girlfriend.
Earlier this month, Boyd spoke via phone at a rally in Alabama, saying: “I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t participate in any killing.”
A jury convicted Boyd of capital murder during a kidnapping and recommended by a vote of 10-2 that he receive a death sentence.
Shawn Ingram, the man prosecutors accused of pouring the gasoline and then setting Huguley on fire, was also convicted of capital murder and is also on Alabama’s death row.
Alabama last year began using nitrogen gas to carry out some executions.
Boyd’s attorneys have urged the federal courts to halt the execution to scrutinize the new method. A federal judge rejected the request. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday also declined a request by Boyd’s attorneys to stay the execution.
Boyd is scheduled to die by nitrogen hypoxia, a controversial and relatively new execution method. The lethal injection alternative is designed to cause asphyxiation as inmates are forced to inhale pure nitrogen, instead of breathable air, through a gas mask. Critics believe the procedure constitutes undue suffering, but the state has repeatedly insisted it’s humane. Alabama tested the method for the first time on a condemned inmate last January.
Earlier this year, Boyd pushed for execution by firing squad, hanging or medical-aid-in-dying instead, arguing
nitrogen hypoxia is unconstitutionally cruel.
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