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WITNESSES CALL "NITROGEN HYPOXIA" EXECUTION MACABRE  
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Jamiles Lartey
January 27, 2024
The Marshall Project
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_ “This was the fifth execution that I’ve witnessed in Alabama,
and I have never seen such a violent reaction to an execution,” said
journalist Lee Hedgepeth. Ultimately, the execution lasted about 22
minutes. _

Kenneth Smith, left, the first subject of nitrogen gas execution,
embraces his spiritual advisor, the Rev. Jeff Hood., Courtesy Rev.
Jeff Hood

 

The state of Alabama had said that when strapped to a gurney and
fitted with a mask pumped full of pure nitrogen, Kenneth Smith would
be unconscious within seconds
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his execution. Proponents of the experimental method
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it would be humane, “painless and quick.”
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That’s not what played out on Thursday night, according to media
witnesses, who described
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to four minutes of writhing and thrashing, and a longer period of
heavy breathing. “This was the fifth execution that I’ve witnessed
in Alabama, and I have never seen such a violent reaction to an
execution,”
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Lee Hedgepeth.
[[link removed]] Ultimately,
the execution lasted about 22 minutes.

With that macabre scene, Alabama carried out the first known execution
by “nitrogen hypoxia,” an untested method
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experts warned was unlikely to work as promised
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as our colleague Maurice Chammah reported earlier this week.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall described the execution as a
success and said that nothing unexpected happened,
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what he describes as Smith’s “involuntary movements.”

Smith was convicted of the stabbing death of Elizabeth Sennett in 1988
in a murder-for-hire plot. He elected nitrogen instead of lethal
injection
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year, citing a fear of needles that developed after the state
attempted, and failed, to put him to death with drugs in 2022. In that
instance, executioners tried for more than four hours to insert the
necessary IV line, without success.
[[link removed]] Smith
said the experience left him with severe trauma that compounded
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he prepared to head to the execution chamber again.

Smith maintained that although he’d chosen nitrogen over lethal
injection, that didn’t waive his right to “challenge the new
untested method,”
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AL.com. Ultimately, he hoped the state would offer mercy.
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That hope wasn’t without precedent. In 2018, Doyle Hamm survived a
botched lethal injection
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to what happened to Smith, an ordeal that left Hamm with organ damage,
according to his lawyers. Alabama agreed not to attempt to execute
him again
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died from cancer in 2021.

While Alabama was the first state to carry out an execution with
nitrogen, Oklahoma was the first to authorize it. In 2015, it did so
as a solution to problems sourcing drugs and the specter
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botched lethal injections. Last September, Oklahoma Department of
Corrections Director Steven Harpe said he would be watching
Alabama’s implementation closely
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suggesting that it would have some bearing on how Oklahoma moved
forward with nitrogen. “We care about that inmate’s experience,”
Harpe told The Oklahoman, “I want to make sure that’s as humane as
possible for him, for his family, for the victim’s family, for
everybody that has to witness that." Harpe’s office did not respond
to a request for comment Friday.

At present, Oklahoma can only switch to nitrogen
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lethal injection is declared unconstitutional or if the drugs become
unavailable, which has happened before.
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is of major consequence in a state that has 13 executions scheduled
this year, according to the non-profit Death Penalty Information
Center. [[link removed]]

Nitrogen may be a new execution agent, but the use of gas to carry
out death sentences has a long history in the U.S.,
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Randy Dotinga chronicled for The Washington Post this week.

Several states, including Utah
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Carolina,
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have efforts underway to use firing squads
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largely a relic of the Civil War,
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executions. The case for firing squads is similar to the support for
nitrogen: a lack of access to lethal injection drugs and arguments
that it may be more humane than other methods. This week, Utah
officials sought a death warrant for Ralph Menzies
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even though he cannot understand the reasons for his execution due to
dementia, according to his lawyers. Menzies, convicted of abducting
and murdering a woman in 1988, has chosen death by firing squad.

The states’ search for different execution methods comes at a
turbulent moment for the death penalty. Executions remain near a
30-year-low,
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after years of decline, there are signs of resurgence,
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Lara Bazelon for Politico. She lays blame on the U.S. Supreme Court,
“whose historic role of maintaining guardrails has given way to
removing roadblocks” to execution, with the rise of its conservative
6-3 supermajority. It was that same configuration
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green-lit Smith’s execution late Thursday.

This week, the justices also agreed to hear the case
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Oklahoma death row prisoner Richard Glossip, who was convicted in 1997
of orchestrating the murder of his employer. His appeals have
attracted bipartisan political support, including an uncommon
admission from the state’s Republican attorney general that
Glossip’s conviction was flawed.

Glossip, who has been assigned nine execution dates and eaten three
“last meals,” has unsettled the typical partisan split on capital
punishment. A number of conservatives in the heavily Republican state
say his case has forced them to reconsider their positions.
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Similarly, in Missouri, a Republican state legislator who previously
supported the death penalty has recently introduced a bill to abolish
capital punishment in that state,
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the issue around “restraining government overreach and protecting
life,” reports the Missouri Independent. A lawmaker in Ohio has also
introduced a bill to eliminate the death penalty
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In the case of one Missouri death row prisoner, there’s another
politically unlikely mercy effort in motion. Sixty prison
staffers signed a letter this week asking Gov. Mike Parson
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commute the sentence of Brian Dorsey, who is scheduled for execution
on May 9. “Generally, we believe in the use of capital
punishment,” the group wrote, but cited Dorsey’s exemplary conduct
in prison in its appeal for mercy.

Earlier this month, the Biden administration announced that it
would seek the death penalty for
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gunman who killed 10 people in a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in
2022, in a racist attack explicitly targeting Black people. That
decision comes after Biden ran on a 2020 platform promising
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“eliminate the death penalty.”

_Jamiles Lartey is a New Orleans-based staff writer for The Marshall
Project. Previously, he worked as a reporter for the Guardian covering
issues of criminal justice, race and policing. Jamiles was a member of
the team behind the award-winning online database “The Counted,”
tracking police violence in 2015 and 2016. In 2016, he was named
“Michael J. Feeney Emerging Journalist of the Year” by the
National Association of Black Journalists. In his off time, Jamiles is
an avid drummer, playing and recording with artists in the New Orleans
area.  EMAIL [email protected]  TWITTER @Jamiles
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* Death Penalty
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* Torture
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* Nitrogen Hypoxia
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* Alabama
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