Gregory Hunt

Gregory Hunt spent thirty-five years on Alabama's death row — longer than his victim, Karen Lane, had been alive. In his final months he could not find counsel and filed his own motions pro se, arguing against his execution warrant in a hand that a federal court found technically deficient and legally insufficient. He gave an interview to the Associated Press before his execution in which he described a religious conversion and called Jesus a 'defense attorney' who would have opposed capital punishment. He also told the AP, plainly: 'I don't have no pity party.'

Hunt's execution on June 10, 2025 was the sixth application of Alabama's nitrogen protocol and the most bureaucratic to date. There was no split federal panel, no dissenting Justice, no international press deployment. The state had normalized the method. Witnesses again reported visible movement and gasping. The Alabama Department of Corrections again called what witnesses had seen consistent with the protocol.

For scholars, Hunt's death is the record of what nitrogen executions look like once they become routine — carried out under a Chief Judge (Emily C. Marks) who would preside a year later over the Lee bench trial and issue the factual findings that ended the method.