United States: On Wednesday, United Nations specialists urged US authorities not to proceed with the planned nitrogen hypoxia execution of an inmate, claiming that the practice could subject him to “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, or even torture.”
Kenneth Smith, convicted of murder-for-hire in 1988, is slated to be executed in the US state of Alabama on January 25 utilizing the technique, which is designed to deprive him of oxygen by employing a face mask connected to a nitrogen cylinder.
Smith, 58, is one of only two persons in the United States who has survived an execution attempt after Alabama botched his previously scheduled execution by lethal injection in November 2022 when numerous attempts to place an intravenous line into a vein failed.
“This will be the first attempt at nitrogen hypoxia execution,” four United Nations Special Rapporteurs stated in a statement, adding that the approach could cause “grave suffering” and violate the prohibition on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment.
“We are concerned that nitrogen hypoxia would result in a painful and humiliating death.”
Smith’s lawyers have contended that the unproven gassing process may violate the ban on “cruel and unusual punishments” in the United States Constitution and that a second attempt to execute him by any means is unlawful, according to the report by Reuters.
What’s wrong with using lethal injection?
The reason nitrogen hypoxia was initially proposed—despite these issues, it is now legal in Oklahoma, Alabama, and Mississippi—was because various problems with lethal injection have surfaced over the last decade.
Dunham described the latter as “chemical fire.” The origin of lethal weapons dates to 1982 when an Oklahoma State medical examiner developed the first three-drug procedure, which includes anesthetic sodium thiopental, a paralytic chloride, which was designed to stop heartbeat.
Doctors and medicine producers have opposed lethal injection from its inception, claiming that their products and skills should be used to cure rather than kill. The single manufacturer of sodium thiopental in the United States ceased production in 2011. The following year, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the United States Food and Medication Administration could no longer allow the medication to be imported from abroad for the purpose of execution.
What other execution methods are available?
Because of the increased scrutiny around lethal injection, states are considering different means of execution, such as electrocution, firing squad, and gas (either hydrogen cyanide or pure nitrogen). Except for Tennessee, where five people have been electrocuted since 2018, no other method of execution has been employed in nearly a decade. Given the issues that occurred throughout Miller’s case, this does not look to be changing anytime soon.
When asked what the most merciful way is to execute someone, lain says to the firing squad. “Death by firing squad is nearly instantaneous,” she went on to add. “That’s certainly better than being electrocuted for five or six minutes or being gassed to death for six to 10 minutes or being slowly suffocated under a veneer of peacefulness for 10 to 20 minutes.”
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