Kenneth Smith: What’s nitrogen execution and why is it tightening ethical noose on Alabama?

Kenneth Eugene Smith faces execution over a 1988 murder. — Alabama Department of Corrections

The US state of Alabama is scheduled to carry out the first-ever formal nitrogen gas execution on Thursday following the Supreme Court's decision to not stop prisoner Kenneth Smith's execution.

Fourteen months after a failed lethal injection in November 2022, Smith will be executed over the course of a thirty-hour timeframe beginning on Thursday for his role in a 1998 murder committed for hire, according to Al Arabiya.

When nitrogen gas concentrations are high enough to be fatal when breathed, leading to asphyxiation or total oxygen deprivation, the condition is known as nitrogen hypoxia.

According to the Death Penalty Information Centre, the technique is relatively new in comparison to more popular methods of capital punishment including lethal injection and electrocution.

The use of "lethal gas" for execution is permissible in the following states: Alabama, Arizona, California, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Wyoming.

According to local media accounts, Smith may lose consciousness from oxygen deprivation before dying as a result of being strapped to a gurney and forced to breathe nitrogen through a gas mask by Alabama officials.

In order to increase awareness and disseminate appropriate safety procedures to avoid such circumstances, the US Chemical Safety Board evaluated cases of nitrogen asphyxiation over the preceding ten years in a series of bulletins that were released in the early 2000s.

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