The Supreme Court in the US state of Alabama is considering whether the state can execute a death row inmate using the new method of nitrogen asphyxiation. Nitrogen in itself is a non-toxic gas, but it replaces the oxygen that the death row inmate breathes.
Last month, Alabama’s attorney general asked the court to allow the state to gas an inmate, 58-year-old Kenneth Smith, using a mask attached to a nitrogen tank. Smith was convicted of murder in 1996.
His lawyers argue that this previously untested method violates the U.S. ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.” It is also unconstitutional to execute the man a second time, they say.
Smith is one of two death row inmates in the United States who survived an execution attempt. He was supposed to have been executed by lethal injection in November, but an intravenous line was unable to be inserted into a vein.
Death penalty experts say the state has not provided enough information about the danger to prison staff because it involves a colorless, odorless gas used in a confined space.
Most executions in the US are carried out by lethal injection. The US states of Oklahoma and Mississippi have already approved executions using nitrogen, but have not yet carried them out. In Alabama, this method was approved by lawmakers in 2018.
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