MONTGOMERY (AP) – An Alabama inmate would be the test subject for the “experimental” execution method of nitrogen hypoxia, his lawyers argued, as they asked judges to deny the state’s request to carry out his death sentence using the new method.
In a court filing last Friday, attorneys for Kenneth Eugene Smith asked the Alabama Supreme Court to reject the state attorney general’s request to set an execution date for Smith using the proposed new execution method.
Nitrogen gas is authorised as an execution method in three states but it has never been used to put an inmate to death.
Smith’s attorneys argued the state has disclosed little information about how nitrogen executions would work.
“The state seeks to make Smith the test subject for the first ever attempted execution by an untested and only recently released protocol for executing condemned people by the novel method of nitrogen hypoxia,” Smith’s attorneys wrote.
Under the proposed method, hypoxia would be caused by forcing the inmate to breathe only nitrogen, depriving them of oxygen needed to maintain bodily functions and causing them to die.
Nitrogen makes up 78 per cent of the air inhaled by humans and is harmless when inhaled with oxygen. While proponents of the new method have theorised it would be painless, opponents have likened it to human experimentation.
The lawyers said Smith “already has been put through one failed execution attempt” in November when the state tried to put him to death via lethal injection.
The Alabama Department of Corrections called off the execution when the execution team could not get the required two intravenous lines connected to Smith.
Alabama authorised nitrogen hypoxia in 2018, but the state has not attempted to use it until now to carry out a death sentence.
