The Nitrogen Gas Execution Method: A Threat to Criminal Justice Reform
Holman Prison in Atmore, Alabama (where the executions take place). Jay Reeves/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Recently, I read an article by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), titled “Alabama Has Executed A Man With Nitrogen Gas Despite Jury’s Life Verdict.” The article reported that nitrogen gas would be utilized as a new execution method in the United States in a case named Smith v. State.
Waves of shock and disbelief engulfed me; I couldn’t believe it. All I could mutter as I continued reading was, “Why?”
Amid this shock, I suddenly recalled memories of engaging in a debate in my Criminal Law class at the beginning of the school year about whether the death penalty should be abolished. Quietly sitting in my seat, I had listened to all the arguments. One classmate supported the death penalty claiming, “It acts as a form of justice for the victims of unjustified, horrid crimes.” Another one of my classmates rebutted that argument, claiming it was “extremely unethical for the criminal justice system to uphold such punishment.”
Although I had ruminated on the opposing arguments my classmates had on the death penalty, I still couldn’t establish a logical reason for why the state of Alabama introduced such punishment as an execution method. It was clear that the new nitrogen gas execution method expanded the realm of harsh retributive punishments. I questioned the history of the death penalty in the United States criminal justice system and its relation to the Eighth Amendment which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment.”
The first records of the death penalty in the United States date back to colonial America in which Captain George Kendall was executed in the colony of Jamestown, Virginia in 1608. As the centuries passed, in 1846, Michigan was the first state to abolish the death penalty as a form of punishment for crimes except for treason. Now, in the 21st century, there are currently 23 states in the United States that have abolished capital punishment. For many states to abolish the death penalty while it is permitted on a national level requires a type of common legal rationale. For instance, the state of Massachusetts, a state that abolished capital punishment in 1984, established and reasoned that the death penalty is often applied unfairly, and thus, was ruled unconstitutional in the case Commonwealth v. Abimael Colon-Cruz. Approximately half of the 50 states prohibit the death penalty, promoting the idea that certain states view the retributive punishment of the death penalty as easily exploitative, and thus, should be perceived to be a type of punishment that should be avoided at all costs.
Utilizing the legal rationale of the Eighth Amendment, the United States Supreme Court has prohibited the application of the death penalty with certain demographics. Stating that the death penalty was a form of “cruel and unusual punishment” for juveniles, rapists, the intellectually disabled, and the insane, the Supreme Court indirectly promoted the claim that the death penalty excluding certain demographics was necessary to promote justice. This was achieved through the ground-breaking cases Roper v. Simmons, Coker v. Georgia, Atkins v. Virginia, and Ford v. Wainwright, in that respective order.
The legal rationales in these cases are also connected to the cause for why the most common form of the death penalty in the United States is lethal injection. Compared to other forms of the death penalty like electrocution or gas chamber, it is reasoned that the lethal injection is the most “humane,” and thus, an unlikely form of “cruel and unusual punishment.” Yet, by that reasoning, it appears even more illogical for the nitrogen gas execution method to be introduced and enacted.
In the case Smith v. State, the defendant Kenneth Smith was put on death row after his conviction for the murder of Elizabeth Dorlene Sennet. On January 25, 2024, the Alabama inmate was pronounced dead through nitrogen hypoxia. When attempting to justify this method of execution, the state of Alabama claimed that Kenneth Smith, the Alabama inmate, would face a “painless death,” yet when the inmate was visibly undergoing physical pain through his endless gasps and convulsions, it was difficult to believe that it was supposed to be a “painless death.”
This was not the state’s first attempt at the execution of Smith. In 2022, the state attempted to execute the Alabama inmate utilizing lethal injection but ultimately failed. This marks him as the second person in United States history that a state would reattempt to execute an inmate after an initial failure. Thus, Smith’s attorneys pleaded to the Supreme Court to halt the execution of the Alabama inmate as the second execution would violate both the Eighth and 14th Amendments. However, the United States Supreme Court denied this request, allowing the unethical execution of Kenneth Smith to proceed. Furthermore, to establish exactly how unethical the execution of the Alabama inmate was, there is a need for a comparison of the lethal injection and this newly-introduced execution method of nitrogen gas. The lethal injection procedure generally takes approximately five minutes in ideal conditions, while the nitrogen gas procedure took approximately 22 minutes for the Alabama inmate to be pronounced dead. For nearly half an hour, the Alabama inmate writhed and slowly suffocated. If other execution methods are not used as commonly as lethal injection because they are “inhumane” and “unethical,” what was the true reason for introducing the nitrogen gas method?
The United States' history regarding the death penalty is complicated. Some states permit it, while others do not. However, with the recent execution of Kenneth Smith, an inmate who was not even supposed to be on death row, it is clear that the application of the death penalty and our criminal justice system as a whole requires reform. In her dissent in the ruling of the Supreme Court in regards to the halt of Smith’s execution, Justice Sonia Sotomayor claimed that Smith was a “guinea pig” for the state of Alabama, and I could not have agreed more. The criminal justice system in the United States not only disproportionately discriminates against people of color, making it a system that profits off of systemic racism, but also dehumanizes its inmates with every chance it receives. Implementing an execution method that directly contradicts the Eighth Amendment should not be applauded or normalized. If introducing a new unethical execution method in the midst of when the nation’s citizens, and even states, advocate for the end of the death penalty is not a systemic issue, I don’t know what is.
Catrina Chen is a junior at Brooklyn Technical High School in New York City. In addition to the NGP Blog, Catrina is a Lead Civic Fellow, a member of the NYC Youth Agenda, and a YVote Changemaker. In her free time, she loves listening to music, especially R&B, and reading books.