By Luc Cohen

(Reuters) -As the state of Alabama prepared to execute a death row inmate on Thursday with nitrogen gas, the U.S. Supreme Court’s three liberal justices in a spirited dissent urged the public to watch the seconds on their smartphone clocks tick all the way to four minutes.

“Imagine for that entire time, you are suffocating,” wrote the three judges, led by Sonia Sotomayor. “You are strapped to a gurney with a mask on your face pumping your lungs with nitrogen gas. Your mind knows that the gas will kill you. But your body keeps telling you to breathe.

“That is what awaits Anthony Boyd tonight,” Sotomayor wrote, in a dissent joined by Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, stating that the novel execution method amounts to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the U.S.

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