As of: January 24, 2024, 1:00 p.m
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In the USA, a person is to be executed with nitrogen for the first time.
The case concerns human rights experts - there is talk of possible mishaps and torture.
Washington, DC - A thousand US dollars: This is why the then 22-year-old Kenneth Eugene Smith got involved in a contract killing in March 1988.
A short time later, the client's wife was dead, murdered in her home on a country road in remote northern Alabama.
Smith and two accomplices were caught - one received a life sentence, the other died by lethal injection in 2010.
Smith was also sentenced to death.
After a failed execution attempt using lethal injection, the now 58-year-old is threatened with execution with nitrogen on January 25th - the first person ever to do so.
A look inside Alabama's lethal injection execution chamber at the state correctional facility.
The first execution of a man using nitrogen is scheduled to take place on January 25, 2024.
© Dave Martin/AP/dpa
Human rights activists alarmed: “An experiment is being carried out on a human being here”
Never before has a person been executed in the USA - probably even in the world - using so-called nitrogen hypoxia.
In the untested procedure, a person is given nitrogen via a face mask.
The result is death from lack of oxygen.
Smith, now 58, is expected to die within a 30-hour period from Thursday to Friday (January 25/26).
In 2022, his execution with lethal injection failed.
Human rights experts warn that it could be torture.
According to the UN, there is a lack of scientific evidence that inhalation of pure nitrogen does not cause serious suffering.
“An experiment is being carried out on a human being here,” warns Amnesty International in a statement.
Death row prisoner reports nightmares – “I’m just not ready”
Smith used the 15 minutes he was allowed to make a phone call to the
Guardian
, the British newspaper reported on Sunday.
He was plagued by nightmares about having to return to the execution chamber.
“I’m not ready for that,” he said.
"No way.
I’m just not ready.”
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Smith told
the
BBC in writing from death row that he was constantly feeling sick.
“Panic attacks occur regularly.
This is just a small part of what I struggle with on a daily basis.
Torture basically,” he wrote.
Court documents show that Smith was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after the first execution attempt.
Prison staff were unable to insert the cannula into his arm.
After several hours of lying strapped to an execution table, he was returned to his cell.
Execution with nitrogen – there are many unanswered questions
“I don’t know how we can distinguish what happened to him from a mock execution,” said Robin Maher, lawyer and managing director of the Death Penalty Information Center, according to the dpa news agency.
The organization maintains a comprehensive database on the death penalty in the USA and explicitly does not take a political stand.
Many passages in the execution protocol were blacked out, says Maher.
“What happens if the gas leaks out of the mask because it’s not tight enough?” she lists some of the unanswered questions.
“Where does the gas come from?
What happens in an emergency?” Concrete details like these are not only communicated sparsely in Alabama.
“This is problematic in a democracy.” The exact procedure is unclear.
It is also unclear whether Smith should be anesthetized in advance.
Executions in the USA: electric chair, gas chamber, shooting, lethal injection
The death penalty still exists in the United States today in the military, at the federal level and in 27 states, although in California, for example, it is de facto no longer carried out.
The approved methods vary.
Hypoxia is also permitted in Oklahoma and Mississippi.
There is a gas chamber in Arizona, among other places.
Idaho did not reintroduce firing squads until 2023.
However, these methods are only used very rarely.
People are more likely to be executed in the electric chair, primarily in South Carolina.
By far the most frequently used method in other states - especially Texas - is execution by lethal injection.
Since 1976, 1,402 of a total of 1,582 executions have been carried out this way.
Executions repeatedly fail or drag on for hours.
Smith's case was one of three in Alabama in 2022.
Governor could still stop execution with nitrogen
Kenneth Smith's lawyers have so far tried in vain to stop the second execution date.
In addition to an ongoing appeal in district court, they are simultaneously arguing the Eighth Amendment before the US Supreme Court.
This prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments”.
The lawyers write that the failed execution is already included.
It is completely unclear whether the Supreme Court will take up their request.
The Republican governor of Alabama, Kay Ivey, could stop the execution by decree.
However, observers consider this to be unlikely.
Donald Trump, who is well on his way to becoming the Republican presidential candidate, wants to expand executions if he is re-elected and has also brought into play methods of execution that have already been abolished - including firing squads, guillotines and hangings.
(dpa/smu)