Alabama’s planned nitrogen hypoxia execution raising controversy – Technologist

The state of Alabama is preparing to execute a death row inmate using a new method, nitrogen hypoxia. Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, is scheduled to be executed on Thursday, January 25. Smith was convicted of the 1988 murder-for-hire of Elizabeth Bennett, the wife of an unfaithful, over-indebted pastor who wanted his wife’s life insurance, with Smith allegedly receiving, along with an accomplice, the amount of $1,000. The pastor committed suicide. A jury sentenced Smith to life imprisonment by 11 votes to one, but the judge decided to impose the death penalty.

This is not the first time Smith has been sent to the execution chamber. Back in November 2022, the state of Alabama already tried to put him to death. For four hours, his executioners tried to find a vein for the lethal injection, even turning him upside down. All in vain. Eventually, the convict was taken back to his cell, as in the case of other botched executions, which either had to be interrupted or ended in agony.

No state has ever used nitrogen, the neutral gas that makes up 78% of air, for this purpose. The procedure was authorized in 2018 by Oklahoma, Mississippi and Alabama. In the operation – which is supposed to last fifteen minutes – the prisoner is fitted with a mask and deprived of oxygen. According to the Associated Press, the Alabama attorney general’s office told a federal judge that nitrogen gas would “cause unconsciousness within seconds, and cause death within minutes.”

Used for pigs

The American Veterinary Medical Association wrote in its 2020 euthanasia guidelines that nitrogen hypoxia may be an acceptable euthanasia method under certain conditions for pigs but not for other mammals, as it creates an “anoxic environment that is distressing for some species.” Smith’s supporters argued that oxygen leaks into the mask could prolong his agony, or that the method could cause him to vomit and choke, or leave him in a vegetative state. Following multiple appeals, the US Supreme Court is expected to give the execution its final go-ahead by Thursday.

The last time a condemned man was executed by gas in the US was in 1999, when a German, Walter LaGrand, was poisoned with hydrogen cyanide in an Arizona gas chamber for killing a bank branch manager in 1982 during a botched hold-up, hitting him 24 times with a letter opener. It took Walter LaGrand eighteen minutes to die.

The reason behind this new procedure is that executions by lethal injection have become increasingly brutal and states are finding it difficult to obtain the necessary chemicals. The number of capital executions has fallen sharply in recent years, with 24 people put to death in 2023, a figure that has remained below 30 since 2015, with a low of 11 in 2021 while the record of 98 executed was reached in 1999 according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Executions took place in Texas (8), Florida (6), Oklahoma (4), Missouri (4) and Alabama (2). Last year, 21 people were sentenced to death: Florida (5), Texas (3), Alabama (3), North Carolina (2), Louisiana (1), Arizona (1), California (1) – where there is a moratorium on the death penalty – and Washington DC (1). There are still 2,331 convicts on death row.

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