WASHINGTON
A first-of-its-kind execution in the US state of Alabama set for next week has raised grave concerns of cruel and unusual punishment and torture.
Kenneth Eugene Smith, found guilty of murder-for-hire and imprisoned for decades in Alabama, is scheduled to be executed on Jan. 25 in what outside observers have called an “experiment.”
State authorities are planning to kill Smith using a novel form of execution called nitrogen hypoxia.
If the plan goes through, Smith would be the first person to be executed via the method.
A copy of the Alabama Department of Corrections’ nitrogen protocols reviewed by Anadolu is exceedingly sparse on how the process will play out on execution day.
Many of the details on the execution are redacted, but outline broadly a series of inspections and bureaucratic procedures that will take place on execution day.
After the reviews are completed, Smith will be escorted into the execution chamber and placed on the gurney where he will be killed.
A pulse monitor will be affixed to his body, as will a mask used to pump nitrogen into his body.
A series of procedures to include any final statement Smith may wish to make will then take place, and the warden will confirm with the prisons commissioner that no last-minute stay of execution has been granted.
At that point, the document becomes highly redacted, but says that a final inspection of the mask will be conducted by “team members inside the execution chamber” to verify “proper placement.”
Once completed, the warden will activate the nitrogen, which will be administered for 15 minutes, or five minutes after a flatline is detected, whichever is longer.
Deborah Denno, founding director of the Neuroscience and Law Center at Fordham University in New York City, said that what unfolds after the nitrogen is turned on is highly uncertain, but based on previous industrial accidents and euthanasia of animals using nitrogen, Smith is likely to undergo a series of seizures and could vomit into the mask.
Either would reduce the flow of nitrogen into Smith’s body, which would in turn extend the duration of the execution.
Should he survive due to a lack of enough nitrogen to kill him, Smith would likely suffer brain damage.
Past euthanasia of animals using nitrogen has shown that it induces panic and what Denno called “great distress.”
What Alabama is preparing to do to Smith next week “couldn’t be applied to animals,” said Denno.
Guidelines from the American Veterinary Medical Association say that while it is “acceptable” to euthanize pigs, chickens and turkeys using the gas, its use is “unacceptable for other mammals” because of the distress it causes.
Pigs, the guidelines say, should first be sedated to mitigate the anguish, but there is no sedation mentioned in the Alabama prison protocols.
Asked how such a method could possibly be in compliance with the US Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, Denno said it is not.
“This is a method that’s never been used anywhere throughout the history of the world as far as we know. There’s been no medical testing at all, really just stories or anecdotes from mostly animals and small animals being exposed to nitrogen,” she told Anadolu.
“Nobody is trained to do this,” she said.
Risk of botched execution
Smith has been imprisoned for decades after being convicted as a hitman in the 1988 murder of Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett, a preacher’s wife, in her home.
An attempt to execute him by lethal injection in November 2022 was botched mid-process after prison authorities were unable to find a second vein to start the intravenous lines for fatal drugs to be administered.
That botched execution was one of a series seen in Alabama in recent years. Two of the executions resulted in the prisoners’ deaths after a prolonged period of suffering.
A federal judge last week allowed Alabama to proceed with Smith’s second execution.
Denno said Alabama’s “incredibly flawed” history of executions “heightens the risk that there’s going to be another botched execution.”
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has warned that Smith’s second execution “could amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment under international human rights law.”
“The UN Human Rights Office calls on Alabama state authorities to halt Smith’s execution, scheduled for 25-26 January, and to refrain from taking steps towards any other executions in this manner,” Spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said at a UN briefing in Geneva.
Denno concurred with the assessment, saying “there’s every reason to believe that the UN is correct.”
She further pointed to the US Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, saying that Alabama’s second attempt at killing Smith is likely a violation of the Eighth Amendment “for several reasons.”
“That first execution, which took over four hours, and they didn’t succeed to execute him, was the state’s opportunity to punish. The state shouldn’t get multiple attempts to punish people. That’s not how this works. You get one bite of the apple, and if at that point you don’t succeed, then you shouldn’t be able to do it again,” she said.
The only other time an inmate was executed more than once happened in 1947, when the state of Louisiana killed Willie Francis after the electric chair malfunctioned during a first attempt at executing the teenager the year prior.
