A man convicted of murder over a $200 drug debt was executed by nitrogen gas in the southern US state of Alabama.<\/p>\n
Anthony Boyd, 54, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence, was sentenced to death in 1995 for the murder two years earlier of 32-year-old Gregory Huguley.<\/p>\n
He was pronounced dead at 6.33pm Central time (12.33am Irish time) at a state prison in the town of Atmore, the state department of corrections announced.<\/p>\n
At trial, prosecutors said that Boyd and three other men abducted Mr Huguley at gunpoint because he allegedly failed to pay for $200 of cocaine.<\/p>\n
Mr Huguley was driven to a baseball field, bound with duct tape, doused with petrol and set on fire.<\/p>\n
Boyd was convicted largely on the testimony of a co-defendant, Quintay Cox, who was spared the death penalty.<\/p>\n
This was the 40th execution in the United States this year, the most since 2012, when 43 inmates were put to death.<\/p>\n
Florida has carried out the most executions with 14, followed by Texas and Alabama with five each.<\/p>\n
Nitrogen hypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a face mask, causes the prisoner to suffocate.<\/p>\n
The use of nitrogen gas as a method of capital punishment has been denounced by United Nations experts as cruel and inhumane.<\/p>\n
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others – California, Oregon and Pennsylvania – have moratoriums in place.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and, on his first day in office, called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man convicted of murder over a $200 drug debt was executed by nitrogen gas in the southern…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-101026","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}