Planned Alabama execution with nitrogen could be torture, UN says

The United Nations’s human rights office urged Alabama to halt its first planned execution of an inmate by nitrogen gas, warning Tuesday that an execution using the method could amount to torture.

Kenneth Eugene Smith, a prisoner in Alabama, is expected to be executed Jan. 25 by nitrogen hypoxia, in which a person is deprived of the oxygen needed to maintain bodily functions. Nitrogen constitutes 78 percent of the air inhaled by humans and is harmless if inhaled with oxygen.

The U.N. Human Rights Office is “alarmed” by the planned execution and contends the method could amount “to torture, or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment under international human rights law,” Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the office, said Tuesday while speaking in Geneva.

Shamdasani pointed out that nitrogen gas has never been used as an execution method in the U.S. and that Alabama has no provision for sedation prior to employing the method, even though large animals are often sedated when executed using nitrogen gas.

“Smith has also advanced, with expert evidence, that such an execution by gas asphyxiation, in his case, risks particular pain and suffering,” she said.

“We have serious concerns that Smith’s execution in these circumstances could breach the prohibition on torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, as well as his right to effective remedies,” Shamdasani wrote, pointing out these rights are outlined in two international human rights treaties the U.S. is bound by.

She also noted Smith’s appeal and related federal court proceedings have not been completely resolved.

While the method is authorized in three states — Oklahoma, Mississippi and Alabama — Smith’s slated execution would mark the first execution in the U.S. carried out by nitrogen hypoxia. A federal judge ruled last week that the execution can go on as planned, rejecting Smtih’s injunction request.

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled last year the Yellowhammer State can execute an inmate with nitrogen hypoxia, in response to the state attorney general’s request for Smith’s execution.

Smith is one of two men convicted in the 1988 murder-for-hire killing of Elizabeth Sennett in Alabama’s Colbert County.

Those in support of the nitrogen gas method have contended executions using it are painless, and the Alabama attorney general said last year that Sennett’s family has waited “an unconscionable 35 years to see justice served.”

Shamdasani’s remarks come after a panel of U.N. experts — part of the Human Rights Council’s special procedures program — warned earlier this month that the execution method is “untested” and poses the risk of “grave suffering.”

In expressing her concern, Shamdasani further argued the death penalty is “inconsistent with the fundamental right to life,” and called for the U.S. to suspend capital punishment as a whole.