WASHINGTON: The UN and European Union condemned the United States after the country’s first execution of an inmate using nitrogen asphyxiation, an untested method that has reignited a debate about capital punishment.

The southern state of Alabama put convicted murderer Kenneth Smith to death on Thursday by pumping nitrogen hypoxia into a facemask, causing him to suffocate. It was the first time the country had used the execution method, rather than the more common lethal injection.

“Justice has been served. Tonight, Kenneth Smith was put to death for the heinous act he committed over 35 years ago,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement on Friday.

But United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk expressed deep concern about the execution. “This novel and untested method of suffocation by nitrogen gas may amount to torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” Turk said, according to a statement.

UN terms the method ‘inhuman’, EU calls it ‘unusual’

The European Union, which opposes the death penalty, also condemned the execution. “According to leading experts, this method is a particularly cruel and unusual punishment,” a spokesperson for the 27-member bloc said.

Smith, 58, was on death row for more than three decades after being convicted of the 1988 murder-for-hire of Elizabeth Sennett, a pastor’s wife.

After the gas was administered at Alabama’s Holman Correctional Facility, Smith “began writhing and thrashing for approximately two to four minutes, followed by around five minutes of heavy breathing,” local news outlet AL.com reported.

Smith appeared to be “holding his breath as long as he could” and there was “involuntary movement” and gasping, Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm told reporters.

The curtain over the media witness room opened at 7:53pm, AL.com said, with Smith pronounced dead 32 minutes later.

‘Step backward’

Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre, called it “an untested, unproven method of execution”. “It’s never been used before to execute anyone in the United States, or anyone in the world as far as we know,” the official said.

Smith was subjected to a botched execution attempt in November 2022, when prison officials were unable to set intravenous lines to administer a lethal injection.

The US Supreme Court rejected his latest appeal for a stay of execution.

Smith’s last words Thursday were, “Tonight, Alabama caused humanity to take a step backward,” according to the local CBS affiliate.

“I am leaving with love, peace and light… I love you. Thank you for supporting me. I love all of you.”

The last US execution using gas was in 1999 when a convicted murderer was put to death using hydrogen cyanide gas.

There were 24 executions in the US in 2023, all of them carried out by lethal injection.

Alabama is one of three US states that have approved the use of nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method, along with Oklahoma and Mississippi.

Calls for moratorium

While nitrogen gas had never previously been used to execute humans in the United States, it is sometimes used to kill animals.

But Turk’s office pointed out before the execution that even the American Veterinary Medical Association recommends giving large animals a sedative when they are euthanised in this manner.

Alabama’s protocol for execution by nitrogen asphyxiation makes no provision for sedation.

The state defended the technique as “perhaps the most humane method of execution ever devised”.

Smith and an accomplice, John Parker, were convicted of the 1988 murder of Sennett, for which they were each paid $1,000. Parker was executed by lethal injection in 2010.

Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2024