Alabama's second nitrogen gas execution follows what critics call an "insistence on secrecy" by corrections officials

Toward the end of June 2018, condemned inmates at Holman Correctional Facility in southern Alabama received slips of paper that gave them the choice to decide how they would prefer to die. There were two options: lethal injection, the default method, which Alabama had been accused of botching in the prison's execution chamber; and nitrogen hypoxia, an experimental alternative that the state, facing political pressure to carry out death sentences despite a tally of mistakes, had recently authorized.

"Pursuant to Act No. 2018-353, if I am to be executed, I elect that it be by nitrogen hypoxia rather than by lethal injection," read the first line of a printed form delivered to the men incarcerated in Holman's death row unit, which at the time housed around 140 inmates in stacked cell blocks.

Prompts at the bottom of the page left space for recipients to add their names, signatures and the date. Legally, all inmates sentenced to death in Alabama were allowed until June 30 that year, 30 days from the date its nitrogen hypoxia law took effect, to select the new method for their own executions. The inmates would then submit those elections in writing to the former prison warden, Cynthia Stewart-Riley.