Alabama is set to become the first state to execute a death row prisoner using nitrogen gas — a controversial method said to be painless that experts warn is an untested human “experiment.”
Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, is set to die by nitrogen hypoxia Thursday after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his request for a preliminary injunction to stop his execution.
Smith will breathe in the toxic gas through a mask, which will deprive his body of oxygen until he dies.
The unproven method caught the attention of United Nations experts, who said an execution using nitrogen hypoxia would be a “painful and humiliating death.”
Smith was convicted of a 1988 murder-for-hire scheme that left a preacher’s wife dead.
The state attempted to kill Smith in November 2022 through lethal injection, but it failed. He is one of two prisoners to survive lethal injection in the United States.
Smith is set to die at an unknown time Thursday at Holman Prison in Atmore, Alabama.
What is nitrogen hypoxia?
In executions using nitrogen hypoxia, inmates will inhale pure or highly concentrated nitrogen gas until it causes suffocation.
Smith will be the first-ever death row inmate to die using the method — if it goes as planned.
He will wear a “full facepiece supplied air respirator” for at least 15 minutes or “five minutes following a flatline indication on the EKG, whichever is longer,” according to the state protocol.
Alabama officials believe it will “cause unconsciousness within seconds, and cause death within minutes.
But Jeffrey Keller, president of the American College of Correctional Physicians, has doubts as the state has no precedence to rely on.
“I can also guarantee it won’t go that way,” he told The Post Thursday via phone. “They don’t know [how it will go], because it’s an experiment.
“Things will go wrong. They say it will be painless, I don’t think that’s the case,” he added.
Keller likens the method to placing a plastic bag over someone’s head to drain their body of oxygen, but rather than being poisoned by carbon dioxide, Smith will breathe in nitrogen.
“In essence, it’s the same thing,” he said.
Smith’s legal team has accused Alabama of using him as a “test subject” in an injunction. It is illegal to use inmates as experiments.
Keller added that he believes Smith is “suffering as we speak” as stress over the untested and controversial method — and the fact that his first execution was botched — must be lingering in his mind.
Joel Zivot, an anesthesiologist and UN expert, said inmates executed with nitrogen hypoxia risk seizures and choking on their own vomit. He also said any gas leak could prolong the execution as oxygen would get in.
“A leak will do two things. It will potentially endanger people around [or] air could then get under the mask as well,” Zivot told the Associated Press.
“And so the execution could be prolonged or maybe he might never die, he just could get injured.”
Dr. Jeff Hood, Smith’s spiritual adviser, said the method is “terrifying.”
“These people simply do not know what they are doing. It needs to be perfectly clear to the world that this is terrifying,” he told the Independent.
“These are people who have botched three executions in recent years. They’ve proven themselves to be the most incompetent execution squad in the country,” he added.
Only two other states in the US — Oklahoma and Mississippi — have authorized executions using nitrogen hypoxia, but have never used it.
Lethal gas has been approved across seven states — including Alabama, Oklahoma and Mississippi — but the other four have not specified which gas would be used, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
How harmful is nitrogen gas?
Although Smith will be the first inmate put to death using the controversial gas, nitrogen inhalation has caused accidental mayhem in industrial settings for years.
Though it is found in the air, nitrogen gas is nontoxic when mixed with an appropriate amount of oxygen. It is also found in products such as fertilizer, dye and explosives and in chemical plants and manufacturing facilities.
Liquid nitrogen is also used for flash-freezing in labs and other medical settings.
When someone inhales too much nitrogen, it can cause an “inability to move, loss of consciousness, and convulsions,” which can lead to death, according to the Compressed Gas Association.
It can also cause heart damage, nausea, vomiting and poor coordination, it said.
Why is Kenneth Smith’s case controversial?
Many legal experts have come out against the use of nitrogen gas in executions, and veterinarians have even said the method is too cruel to use on animals.
Abraham Bonowitz, the co-founder of Death Penalty Action, likened Alabama’s “experimentation” on Smith to what the Nazis did to Jews during World War II.
Bonowitz, who recently visited the Nazi camps in Poland, said the Southern state is finding ways to get rid of its “undesirables.”
“They invented lethal injections, too,” he told The Post Thursday. “It is a history that should not be repeated in Alabama, or anywhere, and now the US Supreme Court has given the go-ahead. It is a shameful day for our country.”
“The injustices here are multiple,” Bonowitz added. “If he was on trial today, he couldn’t be executed.
“They say when you cross the border into Alabama, they say set your clock back 50 years.”
He said using an untested method for Smith’s second execution attempt is an injustice and the “fear we’re putting Kenny Smith through is outrageous.”
Bonowitz is adamant that Smith wouldn’t be sitting on death row if he had been tried after the 2017 law change, which disbarred the state from allowing judges to override juries.
The 12 jurors on Smith’s trial voted 11-1 to sentence him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. However, the judge overrode the jury’s suggestion and sentenced him to death.
The state does not have to backdate sentences, despite the law change.
“Kenny shouldn’t be on death row,” Bonowitz insisted, adding that Alabama’s justice system is “broken.”
He said the state needs “reversible” punishments, meaning that injustices like Smith’s could be corrected.
“You can let an innocent person out of jail, but you can’t let an innocent person out of a grave,” he warned.
With Post wires
