Alabama will carry out its first execution of a prisoner sentenced nitrogen gas asphyxiationa new method the state hopes to promote as an easier alternative to lethal injections.

Kenneth Smith, convicted of contract murder in 1988, is an exceptional prisoner who He has already survived an execution attempt. Alabama officials interrupted his execution by lethal injection in November 2022 after hours of trying to insert an IV needle into his body.

Under the new protocol, announced confidentially in September, officials will place Smith on a stretcher and place a commercial industrial-safety respirator mask over his face. A tank of pure nitrogen will be connected to the mask so that you cannot inhale oxygen..

The execution began at 6:00 p.m. on Death Row at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. However, some local media reports that the mask will only be worn at 20:00.

Alabama rated him as “the most painless and humane method of execution known to man”and states that he will pass out within a minute or two and will soon die.

Although poisonous gases such as hydrogen cyanide have been used in executions in previous decades, this will be the first time a death sentence has been carried out anywhere. using an inert gas to suffocate someonesay death penalty experts.

Opponents of the death penalty, including UN human rights experts, argue that the method amounts to human experimentation and that may simply wound him without killing him, or lead to a painful death.

“This is a sad, terrible day for everyone, no matter your point of view,” the Rev. Jeff Hood, Smith’s spiritual adviser, said in an interview outside the prison. “But I think it’s especially scary in the sense that we’re about to do an experiment on humans for the first time.”. Let’s legally strangle someone“.

You might be interested > Who is Kenneth Smith, the American prisoner being executed with nitrogen gas?

US states that use the death penalty They are having more and more difficulty obtaining drugs for lethal injections, in part because pharmaceutical companies are prohibited from supplying them to prisons under a European rule that sanctions the trade of products used in torture or execution.

Smith was found guilty of the murder of Elizabeth Sennett., the preacher’s wife, after he and an accomplice received a $1,000 reward from her husband for her murder, according to testimony at the trial. (RTS)