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justice system
'Now Imagine... You Are Suffocating': Sotomayor's Graphic Dissent Over Nitrogen Gas Execution
The liberal justice accused the majority of turning their back "on the Eighth Amendment’s guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment."
Oct 24, 2025
US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was unable to convince the right-wing majority of the nation's highest court on Thursday night to accept a last-ditch petition from a man slated to be killed by the state of Alabama asking that he be put to death by firing squad as opposed to the more brutal and painful method of asphyxiation from nitrogen gas, a torturous process of execution experts have said amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
Anthony Boyd, convicted of a 1993 murder and kidnapping, which he maintained until the end that he did not commit, was put to death by the state of Alabama using nitrogen gas after a request for a stay of execution and a review of a lower appeals court ruling was rejected in a 6-3 decision.
In the first four paragraphs of her dissent, backed by Justices Elana Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sotomayor departed from the majority by asking people to put themselves inside the death chamber with the mask of nitrogen strapped to their face:
Take out your phone, go to the clock app, and find the stopwatch. Click start. Now watch the seconds as they climb. Three seconds come and go in a blink. At the thirty-second mark, your mind starts to wander. One minute passes, and you begin to think that this is taking a long time. Two . . . three . . . . The clock ticks on. Then, finally, you make it to four minutes. Hit stop.
Now imagine for that entire time, you are suffocating. You want to breathe; you have to breathe. But you are strapped to a gurney with a mask on your face pumping your lungs with nitrogen gas. Your mind knows that the gas will kill you. But your body keeps telling you to breathe.
That is what awaits Anthony Boyd tonight. For two to four minutes, Boyd will remain conscious while the State of Alabama kills him in this way. When the gas starts flowing, he will immediately convulse. He will gasp for air. And he will thrash violently against the restraints holding him in place as he experiences this intense psychological tor- ment until he finally loses consciousness. Just short of twenty minutes later, Boyd will be declared dead.
Boyd asks for the barest form of mercy: to die by firing squad, which would kill him in seconds, rather than by a torturous suffocation lasting up to four minutes. The Constitution would grant him that grace. My colleagues do not. This Court thus turns its back on Boyd and on the Eighth Amendment’s guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment. Because the Court should have instead granted a stay of execution and Boyd’s petition for certiorari, I respectfully dissent.
Last year, a body of experts at the United Nations urgently pleaded with US officials to put a stop to the death penalty by nitrogen hypoxia, calling it "clearly prohibited under international law." The experts cited the killing of Kenneth Smith by the state of Alabama in February of 2024 as the "first person ever to be executed in this way," a death which reportedly took more than 20 minutes as Smith "writhed and convulsed on the gurney."
The wife of another man executed by this method—approved by seven states, but only put to use so far by Alabama and Louisiana—said watching her husband be killed this way was like “watching someone drown without water.”
Citing the seven times the method had been used before Boyd, Sotomayor said there is now a clear record of the intense pain and unnecessary suffering experienced by people put to death in this manner. All the killings, she wrote, resulted in a similar experience: "apparent consciousness for minutes, not seconds; and violent convulsing, eyes bulging, consistent thrashing against the restraints, and clear gasping for the air that will not come."
While the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution “does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death," argued Sotomayor, "when a State introduces an experimental method of execution that superadds psychological terror as a necessary feature of its successful completion, courts should enforce the Eighth Amendment’s mandate against cruel and unusual punishment."
She called for Boyd to be spared the excruciating death, given that a less cruel and painful alternative was readily available, and an end to the use of nitrogen hypoxia nationwide. While Kagan and Jackson agreed, the other six justices allowed the execution to proceed.
Before he was killed, according to CBS News, Boyd pleaded his innocence for a final time on Thursday. "I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t participate in killing anybody,” he said. “There can be no justice until we change this system.”
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The Palestine Chronicle Case: When Truth Becomes the Crime
What is sought is not justice but intimidation—to cast suspicion on every Palestinian voice, to brand their words as weapons, their witness as crime.
Aug 27, 2025
The Palestine Chronicle is not a militant organization. It is a modest, independent publication, sustained by small donations and animated by a singular mission: to bear witness. It tells the untold stories of Palestine, documenting dispossession, resistance, and the endurance of a people condemned to silence. In a media landscape dominated by powerful conglomerates repeating the language of governments, the Chronicle insists on a journalism of proximity—grounded in daily lives, in the rubble of Gaza, in voices otherwise erased. Its true offense, in the eyes of its detractors, is not invention but truth.
At the heart of this endeavor stands Ramzy Baroud. His career is the antithesis of clandestine. For decades he has written, taught, and spoken in public, producing books translated into multiple languages, contributing columns to international publications, addressing audiences in universities and public forums across continents. He is not a shadowy figure; he is a man whose work has been consistent, transparent, and intellectually rigorous. His life is not untouched by the tragedy he describes: Many members of his family were killed under Israeli bombardments. Yet while mainstream media rushed to amplify unproven allegations against him, they remained deaf to his personal grief. His tragedy was ignored, his integrity overlooked, his voice distorted—because his engagement is unbearable to those who would prefer silence.
A Crime of Conscience, Not of Law
He is an engaged journalist in the noblest sense: independent, lucid, unflinching. His so-called crime is not collusion with violence but fidelity to memory. That is why he is demonized—not for what he has done in law, but for what he represents in conscience. America, unable to silence Palestinian voices through censorship alone, now instrumentalizes its justice system to achieve by indictment what it failed to achieve by argument. Having harassed universities, intimidated students, and punished professors for their solidarity with Gaza, it turns the courtroom into a new battlefield. And Congress, captive to the whims of its Zionist masters, joins the manhunt, targeting a journalist for the sole offense of telling the truth of his people. As for the mainstream press, it chooses cowardice: ignoring his family’s suffering, ignoring the emptiness of the charges, while echoing the accusations of power as if they were evidence.
Law Twisted into Weapon
The complaint filed against Ramzy Baroud and the organization (People Media Project) that runs the Palestine Chronicle rests on the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), grotesquely overstretched to criminalize editorial decisions rather than acts of war. It alleges that by publishing articles from Abdallah Aljamal—described by Israel as a Hamas operative killed during a hostage rescue—the Chronicle “aided and abetted” terrorism. But here lies the first fissure: This characterization of Aljamal comes exclusively from Israeli military sources, themselves a belligerent party. It has never been independently verified. The claim that he was both a journalist and a Hamas operative remains an allegation, not an established fact. To treat it as judicial evidence is to replace proof with propaganda.
Even if—hypothetically—Aljamal had, at the demand of a militant group, harbored hostages, such a circumstance would not in itself render him culpable: What ordinary civilian in a war zone can refuse the command of militants under threat of force? And even if it occurred, how could Ramzy Baroud have known of it? Even taken at face value, the allegation collapses upon scrutiny. No evidence demonstrates that the Chronicle or its editor had actual knowledge of Aljamal’s supposed operational role, nor that modest freelance payments—if any at all—bore any causal nexus to hostage taking. The federal judge, in February 2025, dismissed the original complaint precisely for lack of proof of knowledge or intent. The plaintiffs returned with an amended filing, repackaged in rhetoric and pathos, but still devoid of the material elements required under international law: actus reus (a substantial contribution to the crime) and mens rea (intent or knowledge).
To equate the publication of articles with material support for terrorism is not jurisprudence but a juridical contortion. It is the substitution of law by politics, the criminalization of journalism under the mask of counterterrorism. What is sought is not justice but intimidation—to cast suspicion on every Palestinian voice, to brand their words as weapons, their witness as crime.
Thus the legal emptiness is evident:
- Jurisdiction overstretched: the ATS was never intended to criminalize editorial contracts.
- Elements unmet: no proven knowledge, no intent, no substantial assistance.
- Factual foundation unstable: the Hamas label rests on unverified allegations from one warring party.
- Political aim transparent: to silence Palestinians and punish one of their most articulate representatives for his independence.
This case is not justice. It is intimidation. It is not law. It is propaganda dressed in the robes of a courtroom. The allegation against Ramzy Baroud rests not on proof, but on the word of a belligerent army. An army that bombs, besieges, and kills—and then dictates who is journalist, who is terrorist, who is fit to speak. To transform those claims into evidence is to surrender law itself to war.
Ramzy Baroud is not a conspirator. He is a journalist of record, a man of books, a teacher, a witness. His own family has been buried under rubble. And yet, America has not mourned them, has not spoken of them. Instead, it chooses to hunt him—to turn his grief into accusation, his fidelity into crime.
Some congressmen have joined this manhunt, eager to please their Zionist patrons. Universities have been disciplined, their students silenced. The press, that great sentinel of truth, has abandoned him, repeating only the charges while ignoring his suffering. This is not democracy. It is servitude.
The elements of law are absent. There is no actus reus, no mens rea, no causal link. There is only suspicion. There is only the will to silence.
And so the true purpose stands naked: to criminalize the Palestinian word, to punish a journalist for speaking the truth of Gaza, to make an example of him so that others will be afraid to write.
But intimidation is not justice. A trial without evidence is not law. And silencing the witness will not erase the truth.
Law or Servitude
Here one hears Thurgood Marshall’s axiom: “The Constitution does not permit the discrimination of silence.” One hears Cochran’s defiance: “If the proof is not there, the case cannot stand.” One hears Vergès exposing the colonial reflex that brands resistance as terror. One hears Vedel’s warning: that when law is bent to politics, law ceases to exist.
Ramzy Baroud stands here not accused, but accusing. He accuses a system that bends to power, a Congress that bows to lobbyists, a press that betrays its duty, and a nation that dares call itself free while shackling its own justice.
Therefore, the American judicial system has a choice: to lend its authority to propaganda, or to defend the very principle that sustains law—that guilt must be proven, not declared. To condemn Ramzy Baroud would be to condemn journalism itself. To acquit him is to restore some dignity to justice. The choice is clear.
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The Final Hours of Jessie Hoffman, Murdered by the State of Louisiana
The killing of this man, said one of his lawyers, "has been in service of no one, but the bloodlust of our state government.”
Mar 20, 2025
Three hours before he was to be murdered by the State of Louisiana, Jessie Hoffman greeted me with a strong handshake and an embrace. He stared deep into my eyes and thanked me for coming. We discussed his son, also named Jessie, and how proud he has made his dad.
Also visiting were three of the many lawyers who had been fighting for his life, Cecelia Trenticosta Kappel of the Loyola Center for Social Justice, Samantha Bosalavage Pourciau of the Promise of Justice Initiative, and Sarah Ottinger, who had been representing Jessie Hoffman for 19 years. I was there to witness the murder of Mr. Hoffman if Louisiana reversed its course and allowed one of the legal team to remain through the whole process.
Already in the room when we arrived was Rev. Reimoku Gregory Smith, a Buddhist priest Hoffman chose to accompany him. Jessie is a practicing Buddhist and has been a leader among those in prison for decades. Reverend Reimoku was in long black robes. He was serene and almost glowing in kindness.
We sat around a big wooden conference table that had the logo of the State of Louisiana carved into the middle of it. Uniformed officers from the Louisiana State Penitentiary sat in opposite ends of the room. There were two big pictures on the walls—one of Elijah on a flaming chariot and one of Daniel in the lion’s den.
The room in which Louisiana planned to murder Jessie Hoffman was steps away.
The victim’s sister-in-law specifically asked Louisiana not to murder Jessie Hoffman, saying “Executing Jessie Hoffman is not justice in my name, it is the opposite.”
Jessie Hoffman is about six feet tall and muscular. He was wearing a black t-shirt that said Life Row in white letters on it—the name that its 50+ occupants prefer to call what the outside world calls death row. He has been fasting for days and mostly sits quietly with his arms on the wooden table, staring intently at whoever was talking to him.
Jessie was holding his favorite book, "The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy and Liberation" by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist Zen Master, author, poet, and peacemaker who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967 by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Jessie asked Reverend Reimoku to read his favorite passage from the book to us. It was called the Four Immeasurable Minds: Loving-Kindness, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity. He read and reflected as we took in these words together. Jessie occasionally closed his eyes.
Louisiana was scheduled to murder Jessie Hoffman by first immobilizing him by tying down his arms, hands, legs, and torso on a crucifix-like platform. Then, once he was helpless to resist, they would cover his face with an industrial-grade respirator and pump his lungs full of poison high-grade nitrogen gas. Nitrogen gas causes death by depriving the body of oxygen, essentially causing suffocation in a phenomenon known as hypoxia. This method is so horrible all but two states have stopped using nitrogen gas on animals declaring it inhumane. The United Nations Commissioner on Human Rights has condemned the use of nitrogen gas in executions saying its use could amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment in violation of international human rights law.
Jessie Hoffman was to be murdered by Louisiana because he had as a teenager, after years of shocking physical, sexual and psychological abuse, committed a horrible murder in 1996.
Now the Louisiana Governor claimed it was necessary for the state to respond to this murder by itself murdering Jessie Hoffman to “prioritize victims over criminals.”
Yet the actual family members of the victim of Jessie’s murder were not asking Louisiana to murder him.
The victim’s sister-in-law specifically asked Louisiana not to murder Jessie Hoffman, saying “Executing Jessie Hoffman is not justice in my name, it is the opposite.”
The victim’s husband refused to attend the state execution and said he is now “indifferent to the death penalty vs life in prison without parole.” He also another reason for not attending was he was “just not really feeling like I need to watch another human being die."
Years before, Jessie Hoffman wrote a statement apologizing to the victims. Louisiana refused to deliver it to the family.
Jessie and the victim’s sister-in-law tried to talk by zoom so Jessie could apologize to her directly but Louisiana would not allow it.
As our visit continued, another long-time lawyer arrived. Caroline Tillman, who has been working to save Jessie Hoffman from state murder for 22 years, came directly from federal court in New Orleans. Teams of lawyers tried to stop the state murder of Jessie Hoffman, filing in several state and federal courts. Only the U.S. Supreme Court had not been heard from yet.
More prayers were said. The letter from the sister-in-law asking that the state murder not go forward was read aloud. More prayers. More than 250 faith leaders had recently signed letters asking Louisiana not to revive the practice of state murder with nitrogen gas.
With less than an hour to go before the scheduled murder of Jessie Hoffman, the Warden came in and politely but firmly terminated the lawyers’ visit. He refused permission to allow any lawyer to stay and witness the murder of Jessie Hoffman. Only Reverend Reimoku was allowed to remain.
After the lawyers were escorted out, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to stop the murder of Mr. Hoffman by a vote of 5-4, one vote short of the 5 votes needed for a stay.
The murder of Jessie Hoffman by Louisiana could now begin.
John Simmerman, a journalist with Nola.com, was one of two media witnesses allowed to view the execution of Jessie Hoffman. He reports that at 6:21 pm the ultra-high-grade nitrogen was pumped into the immobilized Mr. Hoffman. His breathing became uneven. His chest rose. He made a jerking motion. His body shook. His fingers twitched. He pulled at the table. His hands clenched. His breathing slowed. His head moved inside the mask. He jerked slightly around 6:27 pm and stopped moving. Louisiana officials reported the poison gas was pumped into Jessie Hoffman for 19 minutes until he was pronounced dead. The last view of Jessie Hoffman with his face now uncovered showed “his head was tilted back, teeth exposed in a grimace.”
The murder of Jessie Hoffman by Louisiana was now complete.
Samantha Pourciau, who was with Jessie Hoffman on his final day on earth, said: “Tonight, while many in our state cannot afford groceries, the state used countless resources to kill one man. The governor cannot cloak this in fighting for victims, because today we learned that this is not, in fact, what this family wants. This is what the governor wants. This has been in service of no one, but the bloodlust of our state government.”Keep ReadingShow Less
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