Alternative to lethal injection
The US state of Alabama wants to have a convicted prisoner executed using a controversial method
An execution cell in the United States. The state of Alabama wants to use a new execution method. (archive image)
© Paul_Buck/EPA/DPA
For the first time, a convicted prisoner in the US state of Alabama is to be executed using so-called nitrogen hypoxia. In the process, pure nitrogen is inhaled, which ultimately leads to death. The method of execution is legal in several states but is controversial.
Kenneth Eugene Smith was sentenced to death along with another man in 1989 for contract killing a woman. Last November, Smith was finally due to be executed after around 33 years in prison. But the execution failed, and the governor in charge issued a moratorium on the executions.
A few days ago, the Alabama Attorney General’s office requested a new execution date for Smith in the state Supreme Court. The 58-year-old is to be executed using so-called nitrogen hypoxia; inhalation of pure nitrogen causes loss of consciousness before death occurs.
The method of execution has been in since 2018 Alabama approved. Because there has long been a shortage of the appropriate drugs for lethal injection, which is why alternative methods of execution are being sought. Nitrogen hypoxia is therefore also permitted in the states of Oklahoma and Mississippi. So far, however, it has not been used in the USA.
Proponents see it as a painless method of execution, while critics see it as human testing. The legal organization Equal Justice Initiative charges Alabama with a history of “failed and flawed executions and attempted executions.” “Experimenting with a method that has never been used before” is “a terrible idea,” it says. In fact, there have been three incidents of failed execution attempts in Alabama since 2018.
Alabama: Inmates call for their own execution by nitrogen hypoxia
Meanwhile, the condemned Smith himself demands that he be executed by means of nitrogen hypoxia. After problems introducing the lethal injection last year, he finally filed a lawsuit against the execution method. His lawyers accused the authorities of having subjected him to “hours of torture” and “mental torment of a mock execution” during his attempted execution. According to a Reuters report in mid-May, the US Supreme Court allowed a challenge to Smith’s lethal injection.
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Along with him, several other death row inmates in Alabama have spoken out against lethal injection and are calling for nitrogen hypoxia to be allowed.
Sources: AP News, Reuters, Attorney General of Alabama