by Andrew Chung
(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court refused on Wednesday to stay the execution of an Alabama inmate, as the state prepares to use a new method, nitrogen hypoxia, on Thursday.
In 2022, the state had already unsuccessfully attempted to execute Kenneth Smith, sentenced to death for his role in a murder committed in 1988.
Three consecutive executions were canceled at the time, as state officials encountered difficulties or delays in setting up the intravenous drips needed to perform the lethal injections.
This will be the first time that nitrogen hypoxia has been used to execute a death row inmate. This method involves placing a mask on the condemned person and making him breathe nitrogen, which causes asphyxiation.
Supreme Court judges rejected Kenneth Smith’s request for a stay of execution.
Kenneth Smith’s lawyers had asked the Supreme Court to intervene before their client’s execution, arguing that the protocol planned by Alabama was “recent and had not been tested” and that hypoxia at the Nitrogen was “a new method of execution which has never been tried by any state or federal government.”
The Attorney General of Alabama, Republican Steve Marshall, for his part declared in a document that this method was “perhaps the most humane method of execution ever devised”.
On January 16, the United Nations Human Rights Office asked the authorities of the State of Alabama to suspend the execution of Kenneth Smith, considering that it could amount to torture.
American states still carrying out executions face difficulties in obtaining barbiturates used in lethal injections, in particular because of a European ban which prevents pharmaceutical companies from selling drugs intended for use in executions.
(Reporting Andrew Chung; French version Camille Raynaud)
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