By KIM CHANDLER
ATMORE, Ala. — Unless blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court, Alabama will attempt to put a man to death with nitrogen gas Thursday night, a never used execution method that the state claims will be humane but critics call cruel and experimental.
Kenneth Eugene Smith, a 58-year-old convicted killer whose 2022 lethal injection was called off at the last minute because authorities couldn’t connect an IV line, is scheduled to be executed at a south Alabama prison.
Alabama plans to put a respirator mask over Smith’s face and replace the air he is breathing with pure nitrogen gas, causing him to die from lack of oxygen. The execution will be the first attempt to use a new execution method since the 1982 introduction of lethal injection, now the most common execution method in the United States.
“The eyes of the world are on this impending moral apocalypse. Our prayer is that people will not turn their heads. We simply cannot normalize the suffocation of each other,” Smith and the Rev. Jeff Hood, Smith’s spiritual adviser, said in a statement Thursday afternoon.
The state has predicted the nitrogen gas will cause unconsciousness within seconds and death within minutes. A state attorney told the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that it will be “the most painless and humane method of execution known to man.” But some doctors and organizations have raised alarm about the state’s plan.
Smith’s attorneys asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution to review claims that the new method violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment and deserves more legal scrutiny before it is used on a person.
“There is little research regarding death by nitrogen hypoxia. When the State is considering using a novel form of execution that has never been attempted anywhere, the public has an interest in ensuring the State has researched the method adequately and established procedures to minimize the pain and suffering of the…
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