The State of Alabama plans to execute Anthony Boyd by nitrogen suffocation on October 23, despite the conviction heavily relying on clashing eyewitness testimony during his trial. Boyd, 53, has been on death row in Alabama for the last three decades. He was convicted in 1995 of capital murder and kidnapping in the death of George Huguley, and a jury voted 10-2 to recommend that he receive the death penalty. Boyd was just 21 and had no significant prior criminal history when he was arrested with three other people, Shawn Ingram, Quintay Cox, and Marcel Ackles, and charged as an accomplice in the 1993 killing of Huguley in Talladega County, Alabama.
Talladega County, with a population around 74,000 residents, was responsible for about 10% of Alabama’s death sentences in the 1980s and 90s, when Alabama had the nation’s highest per capita death sentencing rate, according to Bolts. Half of those sentenced to death from Talladega County were Black, a 2001 investigation found.
Boyd has maintained his innocence throughout. “I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t participate in any killing. This is not just about me,” Boyd said on speaker phone from the Alabama prison where he is being held during a rally in Talladega County that was organized by the nonprofit Execution Intervention Project, which advocates for people on death row. “This is about the injustice that’s going on in this state. I’m a prime example of these crooked courts and the way they fight.”
“We’re here because we want the people of Alabama to know that the death penalty is more complicated than just this game of calling people monsters, this game of just tossing people away and acting like people don’t matter,” said Rev. Jeff Hood, a spiritual adviser and the nonprofit’s co-founder, who became a vocal activist against capital punishment after witnessing numerous executions.
In 1995, District Attorney Robert Rumsey led the prosecution of Anthony Boyd and his co-defendants. Even according to the prosecution’s theory, Mr. Boyd was far from the most culpable of the four co-defendants. The State argued that Mr. Boyd taped the victim’s legs after Shawn Ingram, who was armed with a handgun, ordered him to do so.
At trial, the prosecution relied on the testimony of co-defendant Quintay Cox, who testified against Boyd after he was threatened with the death penalty, according to court filings. Cox’s testimony was the only direct evidence of Boyd’s participation in the killing. No forensic evidence connected Mr. Boyd to the crime—there were no fingerprints and, court filings note, while the State presented evidence of duct tape on the victim’s arms and mouth and near his head, there was no evidence that duct tape was found on or near the victim’s legs.
Lawyers representing Boyd during the appeals process insist their client was innocent, introducing witnesses during the trial who testified that he attended a birthday party the night Huguley was killed and slept at a hotel with his girlfriend.
Additionally, there were concerns about ineffective defense counsel. Boyd was too poor to hire an attorney. According to court filings, the court appointed a defense lawyer who had passed the bar only four months prior to trial and had no trial experience, and another, William Willingham, who Bolts reports had worked for Robert Rumsey in the DA’s office for four years and told reporters in 2001 that Rumsey was “one of the best.”
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.
Read more about Anthony Boyd’s case and his efforts to fight for his life at “He Was Convicted Entirely On Clashing Eyewitness Testimony. Alabama Plans to Execute Him Next Week” from the Bolts Magazine website. Bolts Magazine covers the nuts and bolts of power and political change, from the local up. We report on the local elections and obscure institutions that greatly shape public policies but are overlooked in the U.S., and the grassroots movements that surround them.
