After execution Death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith with controversial nitrogen hypoxia method in January, Alabama lawmakers said introduced a bill to ban the practice entirely. Paradoxically, nitrogen hypoxia – in which a prisoner is killed by being forced to breathe pure nitrogen – was originally introduced in Alabama as presumably more humane form of execution than lethal injection.
The Alabama legislature passed a bill permitting the state to conduct nitrogen hypoxia executions in 2018. At the time, the execution method was not fully tested, a fact that quickly caused it to become controversial at the same time that Alabama’s death row inmates were clamoring for rumor of being killed using the hypothetical technique.
As lethal injection drugs have become increasingly difficult to obtain, alternative drug cocktails have led to a wave of grisly executions nationwide. Alabama in particular has conducted several messed up executions in recent years, it’s all due to prison officials’ failure to properly place an IV line for lethal injection drugs.
Blacksmith, that he had previously survived a failed lethal injection attempt, was killed by nitrogen hypoxia in January. Smith won the right to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia instead of lethal injection last year, although his lawyers reversed course in a last-minute attempt to save his life, arguing that the Nitrogen hypoxia would in itself be excessively cruel. He was the first known person to be killed by nitrogen hypoxia, and witnesses described how Smith “struggled against his restraints” and “trembled and writhed on a stretcher” as he was dying.
On February 27, state Rep. Neil Rafferty (D-Birmingham) introduced a bill to ban nitrogen hypoxia in Alabama, forcing a return to lethal injection in most cases instead. (Execution by electric chair is technically allowed in Alabama, but inmates are very unlikely to accept it.)
The legislation, which likely will not pass, has been framed by many death penalty supporters as an attempt to remove an inherently cruel method of execution.
“I think [the bill] it is a courageous attempt to reintroduce a modicum of humanity to Alabama that will most likely fail,” said Lauren Faraino, founder and director of The Woods Foundation, a criminal justice nonprofit. said THE Alabama Spotlight this week. “I don’t think any of our politicians have the interest or courage to reverse what can only be described as torture.”
But is it? While nitrogen hypoxia is clearly a terrible way to die, executions by lethal injection are also notoriously cruel: the most popular drug cocktail is known cause excruciating, burning pain before killing the inmates. A world in which prisoners on death row cannot opt for nitrogen hypoxia is obviously not one in which Alabama is less cruel in the way it executes inmates sentenced to death.
While the horror at the gruesome nature of nitrogen hypoxia executions is understandable, the back and forth over the method – first hailed as more “humane” and then as cruel – shows an unfortunate truth: As it turns out, there really is no one way nice way to kill someone.
If Alabama lawmakers really want to stop killing death row prisoners in horrific ways, then they should consider not killing them at all.