by C. Alessandro Mauceri –
A 58-year-old man, Kenneth Smith, sentenced to death by a court, was killed in an Alabama prison by a new and controversial method: he was forced to inhale pure nitrogen gas through a face mask.
A new chapter has been added to the long controversy over the use of the death penalty: that concerning the system used. According to Alabama authorities, the “new” method is “perhaps the most humane execution method ever conceived.” Eyewitness statements from journalists present in the death chamber provided a different picture of what happened. Smith’s death was far from humane: the execution lasted about 22 minutes. Marty Roney of the Montgomery Advertiser reported that “Smith writhed on the gurney. He was panting deeply, his body shaking violently with his eyes rolling into the back of his head.” And again, “Smith clenched his fists, his legs were shaking… he appeared to be gasping. The stretcher shook several times.” Even the Rev. Jeff Hood, Smith’s spiritual advisor, who stood by him for the execution, said prison officials in the room “were visibly surprised at how bad this thing had gone.” “What we saw were minutes of someone fighting for their life,” Hood said.
White House authorities declared the decision to use this system to carry out the death sentence “worrying”. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Biden is “deeply concerned about the death penalty and whether he is consistent with our values.”
Before the execution, Smith’s lawyers had unsuccessfully tried to stop it by arguing that carrying out the death sentence using unproven methods was violating constitutional rights against cruelty. They also argued that Smith had already been subjected to execution proceedings previously. In November 2022, Smith was strapped to a gurney for several hours while the perpetrators attempted, but failed, to find a vein into which to inject the lethal drugs. According to his lawyers, this would have placed Smith in the rare position of being considered among the detainees survivors of an execution.
A few days before being executed, in a telephone interview with the Guardian, Smith declared that he was not ready to die: he had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder caused by his first failed execution attempt and suffered from insomnia and anxiety . Everything useless. His execution lasted about 22 minutes. Shortly before, in his final statement, Smith said that “Tonight Alabama makes humanity take a step back….” After the experimental phase (on a man?) it seems that Ohio is also considering the adoption of nitrogen gas for executions.
“Smith was a guinea pig on which a new method was tested which, inexplicably, the Supreme Court did not consider unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel punishment” declared Riccardo Noury, spokesperson for Amnesty International Italy, “ Given that no method of execution is painless or bloodless, here we are at a worse level of ferocity.
The use of nitrogen hypoxia, precisely because it is a cruel treatment, has been banned on animals. But evidently not on humans. At least in the USA, the “champions of human rights”.
