United Nations experts are calling for the halt of an Alabama prisoner’s execution by nitrogen gas over concerns it could cause “grave suffering.”
Kenneth Smith, who was convicted of murder in 1996, has been scheduled to be executed on Jan. 25 through a face mask that will administer the toxic chemical into his airways until he is deprived of oxygen.
Four UN experts – Morris Tidball-Binz, Alice Edwards, Tlaeng Mofokeng, and Margaret Satterthwaite – have raised alarms about the “untested method,” saying it could cause the prisoner “grave suffering.”
“We are concerned that nitrogen hypoxia would result in a painful and humiliating death,” the experts said in a joint statement.
Although death by nitrogen gas was approved in the Southern state in 2018, it is the first time in the world that it will be used to kill a death row prisoner.
Only two other states in the US – Oklahoma and Mississippi – have authorized the method for execution, but have never used it.
Alabama upheld the ruling in a 6-2 vote last year. The state attempted to execute Smith, 58, in November 2022 through lethal injection. But officials botched the job by failing to insert the intravenous line into his vein.
Smith is one of two prisoners to survive lethal injection in the United States.
His survival caused a temporary pause on the injections in the state after Republican Gov. Kay Ivey announced authorities would review the procedures after two prisoners in two months survived their attempted executions.
The state’s Attorney General’s Office then requested to use the nitrogen method in August and it was approved.
The UN experts are worried the method would be akin to “torture” and “violate the prohibition” of the prisoner by causing cruel and inhumane punishment.
The experts warned Alabama that “punishments that cause severe pain and suffering beyond harms inherent in lawful sanctions [will] likely violate the Convention against Torture,” which the US is a part of.
The four UN members are calling for nitrogen gas executions to be halted everywhere until the protocol has been reviewed, they said in a statement.
In addition, spiritual advisers, who are allowed to be in the room with prisoners as they die, have raised concerns over the methods.
“Nitrogen hypoxia execution doesn’t just endanger the condemned — it threatens everyone in the room, since people generally can’t detect they’re breathing the gas until it’s too late,” Smith’s spiritual advisor Jeff Hood wrote for Scheer Post in December.
“I’d read the reports of the consequences of a potential leak. Kenny didn’t mince words either and basically asked if I was prepared to die to do this.”
Although Hood said he still plans on being with Smith has he dies in three weeks, he did raise flags about the waiver Alabama asked him to sign, which stated that he could be exposed to gas and should stay three feet away from Smith at all times.
Smith’s lawyers have raised concerns over his constitutional rights, saying a second execution could be a violation. They also said he has yet to exhaust all his avenues of appeal.
With Post wires.
