Alabama plans to execute a man using nitrogen gas. How will it work? Few know.
Alabama is poised to use nitrogen gas in a planned execution next month — making it the first of any state to attempt such a method and setting the stage for legal challenges.
ATMORE, Ala. — Alabama is poised to use nitrogen gas in a planned execution next month, the first state to attempt such a method, setting the stage for legal challenges as officials across the U.S. examine alternatives amid a shortage of lethal injection drugs.
But while Alabama is intent on using nitrogen hypoxia, in which a person breathes only nitrogen and dies from a lack of oxygen, some details of the protocol remain cloaked in mystery to the public.
Even the inmate who is set to die, Kenneth Eugene Smith, told NBC News this month that he is not privy to an unredacted state protocol describing how the procedure will work. His legal and medical representatives were permitted this month to tour the execution chamber and inspect a mask for breathing the nitrogen, but without Smith.
“As goes Kenny, so goes the rest of my brothers,” Smith said of the 163 other death row inmates in the state during a phone interview from the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.
Adding to the novelty of his case, Smith, 58, is a rare example of a person surviving a failed execution attempt: A previous plan to put him to death by lethal injection in November 2022 was called off when prison staff was unable to find a suitable vein. This, in addition to mounting scrutiny over the use of the lethal injection in other inmates, set off a pause in executions in Alabama.
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