Montgomery, Alaa.. MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Family members and supporters of an Alabama inmate scheduled to be executed this month on Wednesday pleaded with the state to spare his life as he maintained he did not commit the 1993 murder.
Anthony Boyd, 53, is scheduled to be executed by nitrogen gas on October 23. The judge sentenced Boyd to death for his role in the 1993 killing of Gregory Huguley in Talladega. Prosecutors said Boyd tied Huguely’s feet together before another man doused him in gasoline and set him on fire over a $200 cocaine debt.
In front of a billboard reading “Save Anthony Boyd,” family members and supporters held a news conference in Talladega to demand the state stop the execution. The nonprofit Implementation Intervention Project and Boyd’s spiritual advisor, Pastor Jeff Hood, organized the event. The group is putting up billboards across the state.
During the press conference, Boyd called from William C. Holman Correctional Facility and spoke on speakerphone.
“I did not kill anyone. I did not participate in any killings,” Boyd said. At his trial, Boyd’s lawyers maintained that he was at a party that night and did not commit the murder.
A witness at the trial testified as part of the plea agreement and said that Boyd bound Huguley’s feet together before another man doused him with gasoline and set him on fire. The jury convicted Boyd of capital murder during a kidnapping and by a vote of 10 to 2 recommended that he be sentenced to death.
Sean Ingram, the man who prosecutors accused of pouring gasoline and then setting Huguley on fire, has also been convicted of capital murder and is also on death row in Alabama.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office issued a statement that Boyd’s case has been litigated for three decades, and “has yet to present evidence that the jury got it wrong.”
“There was no advertising campaign to save Huguely, and Boyd showed no concern for the ethics of execution when he helped kill Huguely,” the statement said.
Alabama He started using nitrogen gas Last year to implement some death sentences. method A gas mask is used to replace breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, causing the inmate to die from lack of oxygen.
Hood, a spiritual advisor who witnessed the first nitrogen execution and now works with Boyd, placed a gas mask over his face similar to the one used by the Alabama Department of Corrections. Hood said the new method does not provide the rapid death that the state promised.
“What I saw was almost eight minutes of lifting back and forth,” Hood said. Boyd’s mother became emotional and fell to the ground as Hood described what happened at the first nitrogen execution.
The state has argued in court filings that the movements described were either inmates actively resisting or “involuntary movements associated with death.”
Boyd chose nitrogen as his preferred method of implementation after the state permitted that method, but at the time the state had no procedures for its use.
Boyd has been on death row in Alabama since 1995. He is the current president of the Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty Project, an anti-death penalty group founded by men on death row.
“I want people to know that people on death row are not the monsters that the public or the judicial system makes them out to be,” he said.