The request to prevent the State of Alabama from executing with nitrogen - for the first time in the USA but also in the world - a convicted murderer, Kenneth Smith, who survived a failed lethal injection in 2022.
The justices did not heed his lawyers' argument that a second execution attempt - after the plots caused by the failure of the first - would violate the Constitution's Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
The case also received an appeal from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, who wrote to the governor of the state to suspend this practice: «I believe that what will happen in Alabama in the next few days is absolutely horrible... In the 21st century the world should get rid of this horrible way of punishing."
While Republican governor Kay Ivey has set for today the start of the 36-hour period during which Smith's execution must take place, he will be tied up and forced to breathe pure nitrogen into a mask until he suffocates.
The inmate is 59 years old and has been on death row in Holman prison for 34 years for having killed Elizabeth Sennett in 1988 on commission from her husband, a pastor with debts who wanted to collect the insurance premium and who then committed suicide.
At trial the jury voted 11-1 to give the defendant a life sentence, but the judge overturned the decision and imposed the death penalty.
The first attempt over a year ago with a lethal injection went badly, turning into a real torture: the doctors had pierced his hands and arms for more than an hour with the syringe without being able to find the vein, suspending the execution due to the risk of not respecting the expected deadlines. Now Alabama is trying again with an alternative method never tried before: nitrogen hypoxia.
(Unioneonline/ss)
