Alabama wants to use nitrogen to carry out its death sentences. The law would make Alabama the first state to use nitrogen hypoxia as a method of execution. Oklahoma and Mississippi legalized nitrogen hypoxia, but have yet to implement the method, according to a report by WHIO-TV News.
“No state in the country has executed a person using nitrogen hypoxia and Alabama is in no position to experiment with a completely unproven and unused method for executing someone,” said Angie Setzer, senior attorney with Equal Justice Initiative.
The nitrogen method of execution theoretically would carry out a death sentence without pain because nitrogen makes up 78% of the air that humans inhale, stated the report. Opponents of the method have related it to human experimentation.
After several failures of intravenous execution over a twomonth span, Alabama opted for nitrogen hypoxia for the execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, convicted for a murder-for-hire in 1998. Smith, among other incarcerated persons sentenced to death in Alabama, seeks to die by nitrogen hypoxia rather than by lethal injection.
“It is a travesty that Kenneth Smith has been able to avoid his death sentence for nearly 35 years after being convicted for a heinous murder-for-hire slaying of an innocent woman,” said Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall in a statement.
Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said in a statement that a protocol for nitrogen hypoxia execution would soon finalize.
