ATMORE, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama man convicted of killing a woman in 1988 was put to death Tuesday evening in the nation’s sixth execution by nitrogen gas.
Gregory Hunt, 65, was pronounced dead at 6:26 p.m. at a south Alabama prison, authorities said, one of four scheduled this week in the United States. Hunt was convicted of capital murder for the killing of Karen Lane, who was 32 when she was killed on Aug. 2, 1988, in the Cordova apartment she shared with another woman in Walker County.
The execution method involves forcing an inmate to breathe pure nitrogen gas, depriving them of the oxygen needed to stay alive.
Strapped to a gurney with a blue-rimmed mask covering his entire face, Hunt gave no final words but appeared to give a thumbs-up sign and a peace sign with his fingers. The gas began flowing sometime after 5:55 p.m., but it was not clear exactly when.
At 5:57 p.m. Hunt briefly shook, gasped and raised his head off the gurney. He let out a moan at about 5:59 p.m. and raised his feet. He took a series of four or more gasping breaths with long pauses in between, and made no visible movements after 6:05 p.m.
The shaking movements and gasps were similar to previous nitrogen executions in Alabama. The state says the movements are expected, but critics say they show that the execution method does not provide a quick death.
“What I saw has been consistent with all the other nitrogen hypoxia executions. There is involuntary body movement,” Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said.
Hunt had dated Lane for about a month. Prosecutors said that after becoming enraged with jealousy, he broke into Lane’s apartment and sexually abused her and beat her to death, inflicting 60 injuries on her body. Jurors convicted him in 1990 and recommended a death sentence by an 11-1 vote.
Several of Lane's relatives witnessed the execution, Hamm said. The family said in a statement that the night was not about Hunt's life but rather the “horrific death of Karen Sanders Lane, whose life was so savagely taken from her.” They said Hunt showed her no mercy in 1988.
“This is also not about closure or victory. This night represents justice and the end of a nightmare that has coursed through our family for 37 years,” the family said.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall called the execution “a long-overdue moment of justice.”
“Karen was a young woman whose life was stolen in the most brutal and dehumanizing way imaginable,” Marshall said, adding, “Gregory Hunt spent more time on death row than Karen spent alive.”
Hunt was among the longest-serving inmates on Alabama’s death row. He told The Associated Press last month that finding religion in prison helped him get “free of my poisons and demons” and that he tried to help other inmates. He led a weekly Bible class since 1998, he said.
“Just trying to be a light in a dark place, trying to tell people if I can change, they can too ... become people of love instead of hate,” he said.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied Hunt's request for a stay about three hours before the execution began. Hunt argued that prosecutors misled jurors about the evidence of sexual abuse, a claim the Alabama attorney general’s office called meritless.
Hunt declined to have a dinner meal. On the day of his execution, he had a lunch tray that included bologna, black-eyed peas, carrots and fruit punch, prison officials said.
The Rev. Jeff Hood, a death penalty opponent who worked with Hunt, expressed sadness over his execution.
“Greg Hunt was my friend. I am devastated that Alabama saw fit to kill him,” Hood said.
Last year Alabama became the first state to carry out an execution with nitrogen gas. The method has now been used in six executions — five in Alabama and one in Louisiana.
Hunt selected nitrogen over the other options, lethal injection or the electric chair, before Alabama developed procedures for the method.
Hunt's was one of two executions carried out Tuesday in the country. In Florida, Anthony Wainwright, 54, died by lethal injection for the April 1994 killing of 23-year-old Carmen Gayheart, a nursing student and mother of two young children, in Lake City.
This photo provided by the Alabama Department of Corrections shows Gregory Hunt, who is scheduled to be executed in Alabama on Tuesday, June 10, 2025. He was convicted of the 1988 murder of Karen Lane. (Alabama Department of Corrections via AP)
Protesters confronted federal officers in Minneapolis on Thursday, a day after a woman was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.
The demonstrations came amid heightened tensions after President Donald Trump's administration dispatched 2,000 officers and agents to Minnesota for its latest immigration crackdown.
Across the country, another city was reeling after federal immigration officers shot and wounded two people in a vehicle outside a hospital in Portland, Oregon.
The killing of 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis on Wednesday set off a clash between federal and state officials over whether the shooting appeared justified and whether a Minnesota law enforcement agency had jurisdiction to investigate.
Here's what is known about the shooting:
The woman was shot in her SUV in a residential neighborhood south of downtown Minneapolis, about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from where police killed George Floyd in 2020. Videos taken by bystanders and posted online show an officer approaching a vehicle stopped in the middle of the road, demanding the driver open the door and grabbing the handle.
The Honda Pilot begins to pull forward and a different ICE officer standing in front of the vehicle draws his gun and immediately fires at least two shots at close range, jumping back as the vehicle moves toward him.
It is not clear from the videos if the officer gets struck by the SUV, which speeds into two cars parked on a curb before stopping.
It’s also not clear what happened in the lead-up to the shooting.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the SUV was part of a group of protesters that had been harassing agents and “impeding operations” that morning. She said agents had freed one of their vehicles that was stuck in snow and were leaving the area when the confrontation and shooting occurred.
No video has emerged to corroborate Noem’s account. Bystander video from the shooting scene shows a sobbing woman who says the person shot was her wife. That woman hasn’t spoken publicly to give her version of events.
Good died of gunshot wounds to the head.
A U.S. citizen born in Colorado, Good described herself on social media as a “poet and writer and wife and mom." Her ex-husband said Good had just dropped off her 6-year-old son at school Wednesday and was driving home when she encountered ICE agents on a residential street.
He said Good and her current partner moved to Minneapolis last year from Kansas City, Missouri.
Good's killing is at least the fifth death to result from the aggressive U.S. immigration crackdown the Trump administration launched last year.
Noem said Thursday that there would be a federal investigation into the shooting, though she again called the woman’s actions “domestic terrorism.”
“This vehicle was used to hit this officer,” Noem said. “It was used as a weapon, and the officer feels as though his life was in jeopardy.”
Vice President JD Vance said the shooting was justified and referred to Good's death as “a tragedy of her own making.”
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara gave no indication that the driver was trying to harm anyone when he described the shooting to reporters Wednesday. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said he had watched videos of the shooting that show it was avoidable.
The agent who shot Good is an Iraq War veteran who has served for nearly two decades in the Border Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.
Jonathan Ross has been a deportation officer with ICE since 2015, records show. He was seriously injured this summer when he was dragged by the vehicle of a fleeing suspect whom he shot with a stun gun.
Federal officials have not named the officer. But Noem said he was dragged by a vehicle in June, and a department spokesperson confirmed Noem was referring to the Bloomington, Minnesota, case in which documents identified the injured officer as Ross.
Court documents say Ross got his arm stuck in the window as a driver fled arrest in that incident. Ross was dragged 100 yards (91 meters), and cuts to his arm required 50 stitches.
According to police, officers initially responded to a report of a shooting outside a hospital Thursday afternoon.
Minutes later police heard that a man who had been shot was asking for help in a residential area a couple of miles away. Officers went there and found a man and a woman with gunshot wounds. Officers determined they were wounded in a shooting with federal agents.
Police Chief Bob Day said the FBI was leading the investigation and he had no details about events that led to the shooting.
The Department of Homeland Security said the vehicle’s passenger was “a Venezuelan illegal alien affiliated with the transnational Tren de Aragua prostitution ring” who was involved in a recent shooting. When agents identified themselves to the occupants during a “targeted vehicle stop,” the driver tried to run them over, the department said. An agent fired in self-defense, it said.
There was no immediate independent corroboration of that account or of any gang affiliation of the vehicle’s occupants.
Trump and his allies have consistently blamed Tren de Aragua for being at the root of violence and illicit drug dealing in some U.S. cities.
Drew Evans, head of Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said Thursday that federal authorities have denied the state agency access to evidence in the Good case, barring the state from investigating the shooting alongside the FBI.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz demanded that state investigators be given a role, telling reporters that residents would otherwise have a difficulty accepting the findings of federal law enforcement.
“And I say that only because people in positions of power have already passed judgment from the president to the vice president to Kristi Noem,” Walz said.
Noem denied that Minnesota authorities were being shut out, saying: “They don’t have any jurisdiction in this investigation.”
Dozens of protesters gathered Thursday morning outside a Minneapolis federal building being used as a base for the immigration crackdown. Border Patrol officers fired tear gas and doused demonstrators with pepper spray to push them back from the gate.
Area schools were closed as a safety precaution.
Protests were also planned across the U.S. in cities including New York, New Orleans and Seattle.
Associated Press writer Audrey McAvoy contributed.
Protesters confront federal agents outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minn. (AP Photo/Tom Baker)
People gather for a vigil after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a motorist earlier in the day, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Bruce Kluckhohn)
People participate in a protest and vigil after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis, on Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026. (Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press via AP)
