Photo credit, Alabama Department of Corrections
Image caption,
Kenneth Eugene Smith is expected to be the first person to be executed by nitrogen gas in the United States
Article information
- Author, Mike Wendling
- Role, BBC News
-
January 26, 2024
A death row inmate was executed using a unique method. Why did Alabama officials use nitrogen gas and why is this method controversial?
Kenneth Eugene Smith was originally scheduled to be put to death using lethal drugs in November 2022.
Prison staff inserted an intravenous line, but two lines were needed to administer the lethal injection.
After struggling for an hour to insert the second IV, the execution was called off.
But Smith, who had been convicted of murdering a preacher’s wife in 1988, was ultimately executed using nitrogen gas.
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This is a controversial method that has never before been used by a US state.
It represents the latest step in the search for a new way to execute convicted criminals, even as the death penalty has become less popular over time.
Problems related to lethal injection
About half of U.S. states still have death penalty laws. Execution methods vary, but some states still allow executions by hanging, firing squad, or electric chair.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), a nonprofit organization critical of how executions are administered, no method has been found to violate the ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.” provided for in the United States Constitution, although some state courts have proscribed certain methods.
However, in recent decades, most states have converged on lethal injection – the administration of drugs intravenously that sedate and kill the condemned – as the primary method of execution.
Texas was the first state to execute a convict by lethal injection in 1982.
Last year, 24 people were executed in the United States, most of them in Florida and Texas, and all by lethal injection.
Image caption,
Eight states still allow the use of the electric chair for executions
However, the procedure is not always simple. Several months before Smith’s botched execution, Alabama authorities failed to put to death another death row inmate, Alan Miller, also due to difficulty inserting an intravenous needle. Several other executions by lethal injection did not go as planned.
In addition, states have recently experienced difficulty obtaining the drugs needed for lethal injections. In some cases, drug manufacturers refuse to sell them or no longer produce them.
The United Kingdom and the European Union banned exports of these chemicals in 2011 and, five years later, American giant Pfizer, the last source of lethal injection drugs on the open market, announced that it would no longer use them. would sell more for use in executions.
As a result, states scrambled to find other ways to execute prisoners.
Texas, for example, has been sourcing deadly chemicals from a secret list of private “compound pharmacies,” which compound their own drugs.
What is nitrogen hypoxia?
Prison officials strapped a mask to Smith’s face and administered pure nitrogen gas.
This gas is not toxic in itself – nitrogen makes up more than three-quarters of Earth’s atmosphere.
But in its pure, concentrated form, inhaling this gas prevents oxygen from reaching the brain, a process called nitrogen hypoxia.
The use of nitrogen gas in executions was approved by three states, including Alabama in 2018, and has withstood various legal challenges since then.
But critics of the procedure say the method is untested and unproven.
“This is an experimental procedure,” says Dr. Jeff Keller, president of the American College of Correctional Physicians. “A lot of things can go wrong.
Deborah Denno, a criminologist at Fordham Law School who specializes in researching methods of implementing the death penalty, said the procedure “is supposed to be painless.”
“But I must emphasize that this is a theory,” she says.
“These masks are generally not suitable for people,” she adds. “They are not waterproof, air can get in.
Smith might have started vomiting or survived the execution attempt with brain damage, she said.
Proponents of the method reject criticism and cite examples of nitrogen hypoxia occurring in industrial accidents, with victims apparently unaware of what is happening to them.
A study prepared for Oklahoma lawmakers considering allowing nitrogen gas executions cites research that concludes that “without oxygen, inhaling just 12 puffs of pure nitrogen will cause sudden loss of consciousness “.
Alabama State Attorney General Steve Marshall called nitrogen gas “perhaps the most humane method of execution ever devised.”
On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Smith’s legal appeal, ruling that attempting to execute him a second time violated his constitutional rights.
Unpopular sentence
The attention to Mr. Smith’s execution comes as enthusiasm for the death penalty has waned in much of the United States.
According to the DPIC, the number of executions has declined significantly from a peak of 98 in 1999.
Not only are fewer death sentences being carried out in fewer states – only 10 have executed a prisoner in the last decade – but fewer capital sentences are being handed down by the courts.
“We’ve seen a significant shift in Americans’ support for the death penalty,” says Robin Maher, executive director of DPIC.
Gallup Polling, which has tracked public attitudes toward the death penalty for nearly a century, indicates that 53 percent of Americans favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder.
This figure is down from 80% recorded 30 years ago.
According to Ms. Maher, several factors have contributed to making the death penalty less common: not only botched executions, but also nearly 200 exonerations of death row inmates, legal changes banning the killing of the mentally disabled and minors, as well as the growing reluctance of juries to hand down death sentences.
“I expect this trend to continue,” she says.
Reports from Bernd Debusmann Jr and Anahita Sachdev.