UN experts warn against first planned US execution using nitrogen gas

United Nations experts on Wednesday urged US authorities not to proceed with the planned execution of a detainee by nitrogen hypoxia, saying the method could subject him to “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or even torture.”

Kenneth Smith, convicted of murder for hire committed in 1988, will be executed in the state of Alabama on January 25 using the method that aims to deprive him of oxygen through a mask connected to a nitrogen tank.

Smith, 58, is one of two people living in the United States to survive an execution attempt after Alabama botched its previously scheduled execution by lethal injection in November 2022 when several attempts to insert an intravenous line into a vein they failed.

“This will be the first execution attempt using nitrogen hypoxia,” four U.N. special rapporteurs said in a statement, saying the method could cause “great suffering” and would likely run afoul of bans on torture and other cruel punishments and inhumane. or degrading.

“We are concerned that nitrogen hypoxia could result in a painful and humiliating death.”

Smith’s lawyers said the untested gassing protocol could violate the U.S. Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” and argued that a second attempt to carry it out by any method is unconstitutional.

Most executions in the United States are carried out using lethal doses of barbiturates, but some states have had difficulty obtaining the substances because of a European Union law that bans pharmaceutical companies from selling drugs to prisons that could be used in prisons. executions.

Source: Terra

Rose

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