“Torture”. The new execution method which is to be used this Thursday to kill Eugene Smith, a 58-year-old American inmate, is controversial. This killing by nitrogen hypoxia will be carried out in Alabama, one of the 26 American states in which the death penalty is still applied. This is the first execution by nitrogen hypoxia in the country, although it is also permitted in Oklahoma and Mississippi. Until this Thursday, the method was mainly used for the slaughter of animals.
This execution technique, legalized in 2018 by Alabama, involves placing a mask over the condemned person’s face and sealing it around their nose and mouth. The goal is to make him breathe only nitrogen, thus depriving him of oxygen in the blood. The person, asphyxiated, then becomes unconscious within eight to ten seconds and ends up dying in the minutes that follow. According to the AP agency, the nitrogen would be administered for at least five minutes. If the EKG is not flat at this time, the process continues for ten minutes.
A risk of feeling of suffocation
Several associations are protesting against this technique, which has not been sufficiently tested. Four UN rapporteurs are concerned about the “serious suffering that the execution could cause”. They claim there is “no scientific evidence” to the contrary. “We fear that nitrogen hypoxia could lead to a painful and humiliating death.”
According to an assistant professor of anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School, Robert Jason Yong, nitrogen hypoxia could cause nausea and create a risk of choking with vomiting, as reported by the British media BBC. The doctor also thought it was possible that the method could cause a feeling of suffocation. This “could constitute torture or other cruel or degrading treatment under international law,” fears Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Alabama’s nitrogen hypoxia execution protocol does not provide for sedation, according to the UN spokesperson. However, the American Veterinary Association (AVMA) recommends sedating even large animals when euthanized in this way.
A reduction in the number of lethal injections
If the US state of Alabama has chosen to now execute its death row prisoners by forced inhalation of nitrogen, it is because of “great difficulties in obtaining substances for lethal injections”, explained Mike Hunter, the attorney general of this southern state conservative. Three chemical substances are injected in lethal doses in this type of execution, according to Amnesty International: sodium thiopental, intended to quickly put the condemned to sleep; pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes muscles and causes respiratory arrest; and potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest. This shortage, which has lasted for years, is explained by the refusal of pharmaceutical companies – most of them European – to supply lethal products to American prisons.
All American states today favor lethal injection as a method of execution, although there are others, such as the gas chamber or electrocution. The United Nations has called on Alabama authorities to halt the execution of Kenneth Smith, convicted of the 1988 murder of a woman.