Alabama uses nitrogen asphyxiation to execute prisoners
- September 23, 2023
- 0
Supreme Court Alabama The United States is weighing whether to allow the state to be the first to execute a prisoner using the new method: asphyxiation by nitrogen
Supreme Court Alabama The United States is weighing whether to allow the state to be the first to execute a prisoner using the new method: asphyxiation by nitrogen gas.
Last month, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall asked the court to allow the state gas asphyxiation of Kenneth Smithconvicted of murder in 1996, using a mask connected to a nitrogen tank designed to deprive him of oxygen.
Smith’s lawyers said the unverified record could violate the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on… “cruel and unusual punishment” and claimed that the second attempt to execute him in any way is unconstitutional.
In a response brief filed in court on Friday, they called the nitrogen protocol “so full of specifications that it is impossible to understand” and said that Smith has not yet exhausted his potential.
“The State’s attempt to prioritize Mr. Smith is a means to avoid discovery of the enforcement proceedings in the federal proceedings that Mr. Smith initiated more than a year ago,” they wrote.
Death penalty experts also say that the state did not provide enough information on how it will reduce the danger to law enforcement officers and others posed by the use of an invisible, odorless gas inside the death chamber.
Smith, 58, is one of two people living in the United States to survive an execution attempt after Alabama disrupted its lethal injection procedure in November when multiple attempts to insert an IV failed.
Most executions in the United States use lethal injections of barbiturates, but the method, used for decades, has become more sophisticated in recent years.
Some states are having difficulty obtaining needed drugs because pharmaceutical companies refuse to sell them to prison systems. Autopsies showed that the lungs of people executed by lethal injection were damaged. filled with foaming bloody liquid, which, according to opponents of the punishment, shows that before death they had the sensation of drowning.
Seeking the death penalty, the attorney general’s office released a heavily redacted version of the Alabama Department of Corrections’ new gassing report, which it calls “nitrogen hypoxia”.
Gas chambers used in previous executions in American states and in Nazi concentration camps used poisonous gases such as hydrogen cyanide to kill.
Nitrogen, however It is non-toxic and makes up approximately 78% of the breathing air. Alabama’s proposed method, approved by lawmakers in 2018, aims to displace the oxygen the inmate inhales.
Oklahoma and Mississippi have also approved executions by nitrogen asphyxiation but have not yet tested the method.
Parts of the Alabama protocol indicate that Smith will be placed on a stretcher and a mask will be placed over his face. Many details about the new device are still unclear, but the mask has an inlet tube attached to it and an outlet mechanism for exhaled air.
Dr. Joel Zivot, an anesthesiologist at Emory School of Medicine who was an expert witness in the execution challenge, said it’s difficult for doctors to maintain a seal when putting a mask on an unconscious patient, and it’s unclear how Alabama would solve the problem by wearing a mask. on a prisoner who is conscious and possibly uncooperative.
“It’s clear to me that they don’t know what they’re doing,” Zivot said. “If air gets under the mask, they won’t die.” Someone who is temporarily deprived of oxygen but does not die is at risk of serious damage to the brain and other organs.
Representatives of the Prosecutor General’s Office did not respond to requests. The Department of Corrections said it would not provide any “additional information” beyond what was contained in the redacted report released last month.
Reuters
Source: Aristegui Noticias
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