The state of Alabama seeks to enforce an experimental execution with nitrogen gas.

Kenneth Eugene Smith, a death row inmate in Alabama has rejected becoming the subject of a new execution using a new method known as nitrogen hypoxia. His legal team has petitioned the supreme court to reject the state attorney-general’s request to proceed with his death sentence through this untested approach, arguing that while nitrogen gas has been approved for executions in three states, it has yet to be employed for this purpose.

Smith's lawyers contend that the state has provided minimal information regarding the execution procedure, releasing only a redacted version of the proposed protocol. They argue that the state intends to use their client as a guinea pig for the first-ever execution utilizing the recently-released, unproven nitrogen hypoxia method, AP reports. 

Under this proposed method, hypoxia would be induced by having the prisoner breathe nitrogen exclusively, depriving him of the oxygen necessary for bodily functions and resulting in death. Nitrogen, which constitutes 78% of the air humans breathe, is harmless when inhaled with oxygen.

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Three US states including Alabama (since 2018) have approved nitrogen hypoxia as a choice of death but never tested it on inmates.

Oklahoma and Mississippi have also sanctioned nitrogen hypoxia but have not carried out any executions using this method.

Trip Pittman, a former Alabama state senator who proposed the new execution method, disputes claims that it is experimental. He argues that while no state has executed a death sentence using nitrogen, there have been fatalities resulting from nitrogen inhalation during industrial accidents and suicide attempts, suggesting that the effects are known.

The concept of employing nitrogen gas as an alternative method of execution was initially introduced by then-Representative Mike Christian of Oklahoma in 2014. This proposal emerged in response to widespread criticism of the state's numerous failed attempts at lethal injection executions – roughly 80% of executed prisoners ended up choking on their own blood.

Supporters of the new method suggest it would be painless, but opponents liken it to unethical human experimentation. Some experts say the technique is likely to cause pain.

Allegations of more suffering

An anesthesiology specialist told in comments for Al Jazeera that the proposed nitrogen hypoxia method may be even more gruesome than lethal injection, citing his own research. 

Joel Zivot, a physician in anesthesiology and intensive care medicine at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, says that while lethal injection can sometimes induce a mild euphoric effect, there is no such fortunate outcome with nitrogen hypoxia. Instead, he speculated, those subjected to this method are likely to experience a slow and agonizing suffocation process, essentially "from the inside out."

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In November 2022, Kenneth Eugene Smith survived a failed execution attempt, because prison assistants were unable to locate the two usable veins for administration of lethal injection.

Smith was convicted in the 1988 murder-for-hire of Elizabeth Sennett in Colbert County, Alabama. Prosecutors asserted that Smith was one of two individuals paid $1,000 each to carry out the murder on behalf of Sennett's husband, who was deeply in debt and sought to collect insurance money.

The other individual convicted in the killing was executed in 2010.

Charles Sennett, the victim's husband and a Church of Christ pastor, took his own life when the investigation began to focus on him as a potential suspect, according to court records.

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