Supreme Court Allows 2 Executions in Alabama, Florida

Gregory Hunt was given nitrogen gas, while Anthony Wainwright died from a lethal injection.

Part of the East Pediment of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington on May 19, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The U.S. Supreme Court on June 10 denied stays of execution in two capital cases, rulings that allowed the condemned men to be executed within minutes of each other later the same day.

The court’s unsigned orders covered the cases of Gregory Hunt of Alabama and Anthony Wainwright of Florida.

The court did not explain its rulings. No justices dissented.

Hunt was executed at 6:26 p.m. local time at a south Alabama prison, becoming the sixth person to be executed in the United States by nitrogen gas.

Wainwright was executed by lethal injection at 6:22 p.m. local time at the Florida State Prison near Starke.

In August 1988, Hunt beat his girlfriend of one month, Karen Sanders Lane, to death. The killing came after Hunt chased Lane through the streets and burned down her house. He forced entry into an apartment she shared with his cousin and left behind fingerprints and a bloody palm print, the state said in a brief opposing Hunt’s stay request.

Before leaving the scene, he made a call to his cousin’s boyfriend, advising that someone should take Lane to the hospital. A pathologist said Lane’s body had more than 60 injuries and that she had died from blunt force trauma, the brief said.

Hunt represented himself in a stay application filed with the Supreme Court on June 3. He argued that prosecutors falsely claimed he inserted a broomstick into the victim’s body so the crime could qualify as a capital offense.

In its brief, Alabama said Hunt’s claim lacked merit. Even if the prosecutor erred in his argument about physical evidence that was found on the broomstick, “there was ample other evidence” to support the claim that Hunt sexually abused the victim, the brief said.

Hunt reportedly spoke no final words before a mask was strapped to his face to convey the nitrogen gas that would lead to his death. During the approximately 10-minute-long process, he shook and moaned at one point, which Alabama Corrections Commission John Hamm said was “consistent with all the other nitrogen hypoxia executions.”

Wainwright escaped from prison in North Carolina in 1994. He and a co-perpetrator then kidnapped, raped, and killed Carmen Gayheart, a mother of two. Both escapees were arrested the next day after a shootout with a Mississippi state trooper, according to a brief filed by the state, which opposed Wainwright’s request for a stay.

Wainwright was found guilty of murder in the first degree, robbery, kidnapping, and sexual battery, and was given the death penalty.

Wainwright’s confession to police, as well as a jailhouse confession related by two inmates, were used against him at trial. DNA evidence from bodily fluids found in the victim’s vehicle was also presented at trial, the brief said.

Wainwright argued in his last-minute stay application filed on June 10 that he was denied due process and equal protection because of the state courts’ “arbitrary refusal” to let him move forward with his preferred counsel to challenge the death warrant that had recently been signed.

The state argued that Wainwright’s right-to-counsel-of-choice argument came only after his death warrant was already signed. It is unlikely the Supreme Court would agree to hear the case and “even more unlikely that it would reverse,” the brief said.

Wainwright made a final statement at the prison, but reporters said they could not hear him from the witness room.