--- title: "Alabama Prisoner Protests Being Test Subject for New Execution Technique" description: "Alabama wants to use an experimental execution technique on one of its death row inmates — and the inmate in question is fighting back." date: "2023-09-27" modified: "2023-09-27" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/alabama-prisoner-test-subject-execution" categories: - "Future Society" tags: - "execution" - "nitrogen" - "prisons" - "the digest" --- # Alabama Prisoner Protests Being Test Subject for New Execution Technique ![Alabama wants to use an experimental execution technique on one of its death row inmates — and the inmate in question is fighting back.]() *Huntsville Texas USA Death Chamber. 1997. \Image: Bernd Obermann via Getty Images\* ## Death Row Alabama wants to use an experimental execution technique as capital punishment for one of its death row inmates — and the inmate in question is fighting back. As the [*Associated Press* reports](), lawyers for Kenneth Eugene Smith, the man upon whom the state attorney general wants to test their experimental nitrogen gas execution method, have issued a filing asking the state to reject the request. The experimental means of execution involves putting a mask over the mouth of the condemned and replacing their breathing oxygen with nitrogen, causing their body functions to fail until they die. Although it's technically legal in three states including Alabama, nitrogen hypoxia has never been used in the US to put a prisoner to death — and it's unclear if it's ever been used anywhere else, for that matter. "The state seeks to make Mr. Smith the test subject for the first ever attempted execution by an untested and only recently released protocol for executing condemned people," the inmate's attorneys wrote in their filing. Smith's lawyers, the *AP* reports, pointed out that the prisoner was already subject to "one failed execution attempt" last November, when the authorities administering his would-be lethal injection were called off after being unable to locate the two usable veins necessary for that procedure. As such, the attorneys argue that Alabama is attempting to move Smith to the "front of the line" to cancel out their failure. This isn't the first time Alabama has proposed using nitrogen hypoxia to execute a death row inmate, either, but it [admitted it wasn't prepared]() in September 2022 when another man was scheduled to be the first person in the US ever killed by the technique. ## Suffocating Success Though nitrogen hypoxia is purportedly painless, Smith's attorneys argue that it's nevertheless experimental because it's never been done in the US before — and [human rights advocate]()s, meanwhile, argue that it's not anywhere near as humane as its proponents claim. As Emory anesthesiological specialist [Joel Zivot wrote in *Al Jazeera*]() about Smith's potential execution, the method may actually be *worse* than lethal injection, which per his own research results in the condemned choking on their own blood a [whopping 80 percent of the time](). While lethal injection can produce a small high, there's no such luck during nitrogen hypoxia, Zivot wrote. Instead, those to whom it's administered are, the doctor posits, likely to suffocate "from the inside out." That sounds far from painless or humane in our book, and Smith has good reason not to want to be the first person in the US to die that way. **More on death sentences:** [*The Death Toll From Climate Change Will Be Catastrophic, Scientists Say*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()