Alabama has received the go-ahead for using nitrogen gas to execute a death row inmate later this month. A federal judge on Wednesday stopped the inmate Kenneth Smith’s request for an injunction to stop the execution via nitrogen hypoxia which experts and his lawyers have condemned as cruel and experimental.
This is the first time nitrogen will be used as a method of execution in the US.
A test subject?
US District R Austin Huffaker rejected Smith’s request and dismissed his lawyer’s argument that the inmate was being used as a “test subject” for an untried execution method.
As per CBS News, Kenneth Smith’s lawyers are expected to appeal the federal judge’s decision, and whether nitrogen can be used for execution may end up before the US Supreme Court.
How the execution will go down
Alabama plans to use a respirator-type face mask to cut off the murder-row inmate’s oxygen supply and replace it with nitrogen. This will cause him to die of a lack of oxygen.
Is it cruel?
As of now, three US States — Alabama, Mississippi, and Oklahoma have authorised nitrogen hypoxia. However, this is the first time the execution method will be put to use.
Smith’s attorneys vehemently assert that this untested execution protocol likely infringes upon the US Constitution’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishments.”
They contend that any subsequent attempt to execute him, by any means, would be unconstitutional.
The inmate’s lawyers have also argued that in 2020, the American Veterinary Medical Association in its euthanasia guidelines cleared nitrogen hypoxia only for pigs. For other mammals, it said, nitrogen hypoxia could create an “anoxic environment that is distressing for some species.”
International experts, including four UN human rights special rapporteurs, have also said that subjecting Smith to asphyxiation with an inert gas raises serious concerns about potential “grave suffering” and “a painful and humiliating death”.
They say that the execution would likely violate an international treaty that expressly forbids torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment—a treaty to which the United States is a party.
However, comparing the execution method to industrial accidents where people pass out and die within minutes, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office in court filings argued that oxygen deprivation will “cause unconsciousness within seconds, and cause death within minutes.” They’ve dismissed the defence lawyers’ concerns as speculative.
Who is Kenneth Smith?
58-year-old Kenneth Smith is a murderer-for-hire who was sentenced to death for the 1988 killing of a preacher’s wife.
Smith found himself facing nitrogen hypoxia after Alabama botched his initial execution attempt in November 2022. The lethal injection failed due to multiple futile attempts to establish an intravenous line, leaving him as one of only two individuals in the US to survive an execution attempt.
(With inputs from agencies)
