Prisoner killed with nitrogen
UN: Execution in Alabama could ‘amount to torture’
January 26, 2024, 11:22 a.m
For the first time in the country’s history, a convict is being executed with nitrogen gas in the US state of Alabama. The method is highly controversial; critics fear possible pain for the death row prisoner. The EU and the United Nations also strongly condemn the US actions.
The EU and the United Nations have condemned the first execution in the USA using nitrogen gas. UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk said the novel and untested method of nitrogen gas suffocation could potentially “contain torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” An EU spokesman said experts believe it was a “particularly cruel” method.
In the US state of Alabama, a death row prisoner was executed with nitrogen gas for the first time in US history on Thursday. Kenneth Smith, convicted of murder, was pronounced dead at 8:25 p.m. local time, 29 minutes after the execution began, according to prosecutors.
In so-called nitrogen hypoxia, the prisoner is given pure nitrogen through a face mask, which means he cannot breathe in oxygen and dies. Alabama is one of three US states that allow nitrogen gas executions. However, this method had never been used in the USA before.
Smith was sentenced to death after he murdered a pastor’s wife on behalf of a pastor in 1988. The death sentence was to be carried out with lethal injection in 2022. At that time, prison staff were unable to establish access to administer the poison. That’s why Smith was now executed with nitrogen gas. Several attempts to stop the execution through legal means had previously failed, including before the Supreme Court in Washington.
The USA is one of the few industrialized nations that still executes people. Last year, 24 death sentences were carried out in the country, all with lethal injections. The last time a prisoner was executed with gas in the USA was in 1999. At that time, hydrogen cyanide, also known as hydrogen cyanide or hydrogen cyanide, was used.