MONTGOMERY, June 10 -- Jeffery Lee was supposed to die on Thursday, strapped to a gurney while nitrogen gas replaced the air in his lungs. On Tuesday a federal judge took that date away from the state, ruling that the method Alabama planned to use on him is the kind of punishment the Constitution was written to forbid.

Judge Emily C. Marks of the United States District Court blocked Alabama from executing Lee by nitrogen hypoxia, finding that death by forced suffocation crosses the Eighth Amendment's line against cruel and unusual punishment. It was a striking turn from the same judge, who had earlier let the execution go forward on the reasoning that no execution is entirely free of pain. The case had bounced between her courtroom and a...