The United Nations human rights office has called on Alabama to halt its plans to carry out its first execution using nitrogen gas, saying it could violate international law.
Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, is scheduled to be put to death on January 25 in what would be the country's first execution by nitrogen hypoxia. He was one of two men convicted in the 1988 murder-for-hire slaying of Elizabeth Sennett in northwestern Alabama.
Alabama's protocol involves placing a mask over Smith's nose and mouth to replace breathable air with nitrogen, causing him to die from lack of oxygen. Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma have authorized nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method, but it has never been used to carry out a death sentence. Experts have warned it could go horribly wrong.
Smith's execution through the untested method could amount to "torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment under international human rights law," Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said during a press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.
"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 said.
"These are rights set out in two International Human Rights treaties where the United States is bound by—the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment."
Shamdasani said Smith's appeal against his execution had not been finally resolved.
She also expressed concern that Alabama's protocol makes no provision for a sedative before execution. "The American Veterinary Medical Association recommends giving even large animals a sedative when being euthanized in this manner," she said.
Shamdasani also noted that Smith had survived a prior execution attempt by lethal injection in 2022.
"Rather than inventing new ways to implement capital punishment, we urge all states to put in place a moratorium on its use as a step towards universal abolition," she said.
Newsweek reached out to the Alabama Department of Corrections for comment via a contact form on the department's website.
Earlier this month, U.N. experts said they were concerned that execution by nitrogen hypoxia might subject Smith to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or even torture.
"We are concerned that nitrogen hypoxia would result in a painful and humiliating death," they said.
Other experts and death penalty opponents have also sounded the alarm over the planned execution.
"Fourteen months ago, Alabama executioners tortured Kenny Smith for hours before sending him back to his cell alive," Abraham Bonowitz, the executive director of Death Penalty Action, previously told Newsweek. "The eyes of the world are on Alabama yet again as it experiments with this new form of the gas chamber called nitrogen hypoxia."
Deborah Denno, a death penalty expert and professor at Fordham Law School, previously told Newsweek that unlike lethal injection and electrocution, which have been used for decades, experts can "only speculate about how a state might conduct a nitrogen hypoxia execution."
She said the Alabama protocol is "a vague, sloppy, dangerous, and unjustifiably deficient protocol made all the more incomprehensible by heavy redaction in the most important places."
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Khaleda Rahman is Newsweek's Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. Her focus is reporting on abortion rights, race, education, ... Read more
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