“In states where the death penalty does exist, it shouldn’t be cruel, it shouldn’t be unusual (and) it definitely shouldn’t be experimental, like nitrogen hypoxia is,” Alabama State Rep. Neil Rafferty stated when he introduced HB 248, which would prevent the state from executing any more people using nitrogen gas, the Alabama Reflector reports.
In January, the state killed Kenneth Smith using nitrogen gas, the first time a state has used that method, and, despite Attorney General Steve Marshall’s boast that the execution was “humane and effective,” witnesses reported that before he died, Smith was “thrashing against the straps, his whole body and head violently jerking back and forth for several minutes.” Undeterred, the state then announced in February that it was planning to kill Alan Eugene Miller by the same method. (The state Supreme Court hasn’t set a date yet for Miller’s execution.)
“There is a difference between execution and torture, and an experimental method that is not even used in veterinary medicine could certainly be interpreted that way,” Rafferty told legislators, according to the Reflector.
Rafferty’s bill is the latest in a series of challenges to Alabama’s nitrogen hypoxia execution method.
Earlier this week, the Guardian reported that three of the largest U.S. nitrogen gas suppliers announced that they would not sell nitrogen cylinders to death penalty states. Like the effective ban pharmaceutical companies imposed on the use of their drugs for lethal injection executions, this ban, too, has the potential to make access to nitrogen gas as a means to kill difficult, if not impossible. “Airgas has not, and will not, supply nitrogen or other inert gasses to induce hypoxia for the purpose of human execution,” Airgas told the Guardian. The other two companies include Air Products and Matheson.
In addition, a lawyer for David Wilson, who has been on Alabama’s death row since 2008, has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the state’s new method of execution by nitrogen gas, stating that “As evidenced by Mr. Kenneth Smith’s torturous, 22-minute execution,” the execution of David Wilson using its nitrogen gas asphyxiation protocol… will cause David Wilson cruel and unusual suffering, in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.”