The first person to be executed by nitrogen gas injection in the U.S.
Supreme Court rejects request to suspend execution of death row inmate
Human rights groups protest against “method no different from torture”
The execution room at Holman Prison in Alabama, USA, taken in 2002. AP Yonhap News
As the first execution using nitrogen gas is scheduled to be carried out in the United States, there is continued opposition from international organizations and human rights groups who say that this method of execution is tantamount to torture.
According to CNN on the 24th (local time), the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the request of death row inmate Kenneth Smith (58) to suspend the execution, saying that the nitrogen gas method of execution was likely to violate the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel punishment. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit also rejected Smith’s request to suspend execution.
Smith, who is incarcerated on charges of receiving money from a pastor and contract murdering his wife in 1988, is scheduled to be executed on the 25th. The pastor who asked Smith to murder his wife took his own life after police narrowed the death count, and Smith’s accomplice was executed in 2010.
Alabama law enforcement initially attempted to execute Smith in 2022, but failed because they could not find a vein to administer the lethal injection. He is one of two death row inmates in the United States who survived an attempted execution by lethal injection.
Smith’s lawyer argued that the execution officers at the time were unable to find Smith’s veins and injected him several times into his arms and hands, causing him to suffer extreme mental pain and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder due to conditions that amounted to ‘torture’.
Alabama authorities are attempting another execution, this time using nitrogen gas. This is the first time in the world that an execution using nitrogen gas has been carried out. This is a method of putting a face mask on a death row inmate and then injecting them with nitrogen gas, causing them to die from hypoxia.
Execution through nitrogen gas injection is a method approved in the U.S. states of Alabama, Oklahoma, and Mississippi, but no actual execution has been carried out.
American death row inmate Kenneth Smith is about to be executed. AP Yonhap News
There are many voices criticizing this method. The UN Human Rights Office opposed the use of nitrogen gas, saying it is no different from torture, saying it is not a method used to euthanize large animals. Four UN special rapporteurs on human rights also pointed out in a statement that the nitrogen gas method of execution has the potential to violate international treaties prohibiting torture and other cruel and inhuman punishment.
Sant’Egidio, a Catholic charity affiliated with the Vatican, warned that it would launch a ‘boycott of Alabama’ against European businesses and tourists if Alabama authorities did not stop execution plans. Pope Francis declared in 2018 that “the death penalty is an attack on human dignity and cannot be tolerated under any circumstances.”
The Alabama state government countered that nitrogen gas execution was the most humane execution method ever devised. “This treatment is far superior to what Smith did to the victim,” authorities said, referring to the victim Smith killed in 1988.
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