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The UN has condemned the nitrogen gas execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith at Holman Prison in Atmore, Alabama.
The United Nations describes it as an inhumane and torturous method.
This is the first time in American and world history that a death sentence has been carried out using this controversial method.
The 59-year-old, convicted of murder, was pronounced dead at 20:25 local time, after the execution was postponed for several hours to await the outcome of the latest appeal at the Supreme Court. Two days earlier the same judges had rejected a request to prevent Alabama from executing Smith by nitrogen gas.
US Supreme Court decision
Before the execution by pure nitrogen gas, the United States Supreme Court had denied Smith the last chance to appeal the unprecedented and controversial method chosen to carry out the sentence. It was the Alabama authorities' decision to use nitrogen that prompted three progressive US Supreme Court justices - Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan - to rule in favor of Smith's appeal, which however was rejected by the other six judges of the Court.
"Having failed to kill Smith in the first attempt, Alabama has chosen him as its 'cavie' to test a previously untried method of execution. The world is watching. "This court once again allows Alabama to experiment with a human life," Sotomayor said.
Smith survived a first attempt to carry out his death sentence by lethal injection in November 2022, due to the failure of prison officials to administer the intravenous injection. Since then, the man's lawyers have tried several times to appeal the execution of the sentence using nitrogen, arguing that the prisoner risked choking on his own vomit before entering a vegetative state.
Kenneth Smith, 59, had been on death row at Holman Prison for 34 years after killing Elizabeth Sennett in 1988 on behalf of her husband, a debt-ridden pastor who wanted to take out life insurance, then killing himself. In a trial with 11 votes in favor and only one against, the jury imposed life imprisonment, but the judge overturned the verdict and imposed the death penalty. He had already survived a failed lethal injection in 2022.
Why and how the first lethal injection failed
The first attempt over a year ago with a lethal injection went wrong, turning into real torture. Operators punctured his hands and arms with syringes for more than an hour but failed to find a vein, suspending the execution and failing to meet expected deadlines. At midnight that day, in fact, the applicability of the death penalty had expired. Then Alabama decided to try again with an alternative, previously untried method, nitrogen hypoxia.
How the nitrogen death penalty works
But how does nitrogen hypoxia work? This is a legal practice in the United States and forces a person to inhale pure nitrogen, thus killing him due to hypoxia, ie. lack of oxygen. A method which is however considered contrary to human rights by various non-governmental organizations and also by the United Nations, which says that killing Smith in this way would be tantamount to torture. As specified in a protocol published by the state of Alabama, the convict had to wear a respirator similar to those used to inhale oxygen. However, nitrogen gas was released from the mask, administered for at least 15 minutes or for 5 minutes starting from the moment when the heartbeat is no longer recorded. According to Alabama authorities, Smith lost consciousness within seconds and died within minutes. According to the document, he would not have felt pain.
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