The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday declined to intervene in a death penalty case out of Alabama and the state, later that same evening, executed Anthony Todd Boyd, 54, by forcing him to breathe nitrogen until he died at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned a furious dissent that opens with a naturalistic recounting of how someone might suffocate to death on their own terms – before bringing her description back to the death imposed against the convicted killer by the Yellowhammer State.

The dissent begins, at length:

Take out your phone, go to the clock app, and find the stopwatch. Click start. Now watch the seconds as they climb. Three seconds come and go in a blink. At the thirty-second mark, your mind starts to wander. One minute passe

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