Alabama is close to completing a protocol that will use nitrogen gas as a new form of execution in the state, officials have said, amid warnings from advocacy groups that it is an experimental move after botched lethal injections.
On Wednesday, Alabama commissioner John Hamm, who heads the state’s prison systems, told the Associated Press, “We’re close. We’re close,” in reference to the new execution method. Hamm added that the protocol should be completed by the end of this year.
For years, the state has said that it is developing nitrogen hypoxia as a new execution method. The method is a form of inert gas asphyxiation that forces an individual to only breathe in nitrogen, in turn leaving them with insufficient oxygen needed by the body to perform regular functions.
In 2018, Alabama lawmakers approved of nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative to lethal injections as injection drugs became more difficult to acquire. Then state senator Trip Pittman, who sponsored the 2018 legislation, compared the method to the way that passengers on a plane pass out when the aircraft depressurizes.
“It provides another option. I believe it is a more humane option,” the Associated Press reported as Pittman saying.
Oklahoma and Mississippi are two other states that have approved nitrogen hypoxia as a form of execution, although neither have yet used it.
In 2021, the Alabama department of corrections (ADOC) told a federal judge that it finished constructing a “system” to use nitrogen gas during executions.
“The ADOC has completed the initial physical build on the nitrogen hypoxia system. A safety expert has made a site visit to evaluate the system. As a result of the visit, the ADOC is considering additional health and safety measures,” a lawyer for the state attorney general’s office wrote in a court filing reviewed by the Associated Press.
Despite lawmakers arguing that the new and untested method is more humane, critics worry about the lack of transparency surrounding the process, with several comparing it to human experimentation.
“Executions in Alabama have been notably secretive, rushed and haphazard,” ACLU Alabama spokesperson Jose Vazquez said, referring to a string of botched executions in the state last year.
“Our state lawmakers should be committed to the constitutional principle that cruel and unusual punishment should not be inflicted. Since there have been no executions performed anywhere with nitrogen, there’s no way to ensure that this method would not be cruel. Instead, Alabama is turning the death penalty into state-sponsored experimentation on human beings,” Vazquez said.
“The state should not be sanctioning unproven and untested methods for treatment of any kind, especially not to kill people,” he added.
Jamila Hodge, executive director of Equal Justice USA, a national organization that focuses on criminal and racial justice, said: “The death penalty, just like our broader criminal legal system, is one that is rooted in racism … [and] regardless of how it’s implemented, is wrong.
“There’s no approach that’s going to be the right approach when we think about the system itself and the fact that we have so many people who have been exonerated and the racial disparities that exist,” she added. “To have so many executions last year essentially be traumatic for those who were witnessing it, including in Alabama … should give people pause, and this new method is untested.”
Joel Zivot, an anesthesiology and surgery professor at Emory College, expressed concern about the untested procedure, saying: “It’s impossible to evaluate it unless it can be evaluated … There really is no way to test it on people that would be ethical.
“It’s unfortunate and I think a reflection of the … questionable understanding of the law on the part of the Alabama department of corrections if they think that the only reason to change lethal injections is that they can’t get the parts for it.” Zivot added that lethal injection has been shown to cause lung congestion, which produces a drowning sensation in some inmates that receive it.
“That didn’t seem to be enough to make them think that there was a problem there,” he said. “So it’s not that they’re not doing it ’cause they think that there’s something fundamentally wrong. They just can’t get the supply or they can’t get the people to reliably start and establish IVs. This is an institution that has learned nothing, that does not understand the law and doesn’t know what it’s doing.”
Zivot went on to express doubt towards the effectiveness of the new execution method.
“I think the nitrogen gas will not work … because even though the gas is inert, breathing it is going to be much more complicated and getting people to cooperate to breathe will be complicated. Because it’s odorless and colorless, it’s dangerous to handle so everyone that’s in the vicinity of the person who they’re gassing could theoretically be at risk themselves.”
