Anthony Boyd, 54 years old, has spent 32 years on death row at Holman, Alabama. Convicted of murder at 22, his case is compounded by doubts about a fair trial, given his economic indigence which compromised his legal defense at the time.

His fate is now tied to nitrogen asphyxiation, a recently introduced execution method that is at the center of international ethical and legal controversy. This procedure has been banned even for animal euthanasia due to its inherent cruelty, and its use in Alabama raises direct constitutional questions, clashing with the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment enshrined in the Eighth Amendment.

Despite his confinement, his humanity emerges vividly through decades of correspondence with Baldo. The letters paint the profile of a man bound to life, to the children who have made him a grandfather, and to his mother. However, this human fragility is now dominated by anguish over the execution of his cellmate, Kenneth Smith, killed with nitrogen in 2024. Though aware of his conviction, Boyd invokes a justice that favors mercy, concluding each letter with the desperate “Be Blessed,” a final warning about how the death penalty “extinguishes all hope.”