Kenneth Eugene Smith58, is scheduled to be executed this week in Alabama, USAthrough the supply of nitrogen gasa new method that the United Nations has equated with “torture“.
The man is convicted of murder and has been on death row for three decades after being found guilty in 1989 by the murder of a pastor’s wife.
Death penalty in the US: what the execution will be like
Smith will be executed this Thursday at Holman Prison in Atmore, Alabama, using nitrogen hypoxia, a method that has never been used in USA.
The truth is that the man already had a failed execution attempt in 2022, when prison officials failed to successfully administer the lethal injection.
In 2023, they were carried out 24 executions in the United States by lethal injection, while the last gas execution in that country took place in 1999when a man convicted of murder was administered hydrogen cyanide gas.
Alabama is one of the three states of USA that approved the nitrogen hypoxia method, which consists of supplying that gas through a mask up to deprive the body of oxygen.
The UN rejects the new US execution method
Ravina Shamdasanispokesperson for the human rights office of the UN in Geneva, last week urged the state of Alabama to abandon plans to execute Smith through that method.”nascent and untested” what could “constitute torture“according to international law.
“The death penalty is incompatible with the fundamental right to life,” Shamdasani stated, a position that the UN has as a principle. However, the state of Alabama defended its decision before a court arguing that it is “perhaps the method of execution most human that has ever been invented“.
Meanwhile, Smith had appealed to the United States Supreme Court to request a stay of execution, but the country’s highest court denied the request on Wednesday, without comment.
Source: Ambito
