UN experts sound alarm over planned first US execution by nitrogen gas

United Nations experts urged U.S. authorities on Wednesday to halt the planned execution of a prisoner by asphyxiation using pure nitrogen, saying the untested method may subject him to “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or even torture.”
Kenneth Smith, convicted for a murder-for-hire committed in 1988, is scheduled to be executed in the U.S. state of Alabama on Jan. 25 using the method, which is intended to deprive him of oxygen by using a face mask connected to a cylinder of nitrogen.
It would be the first time a judicial execution has been carried out anywhere in the world using asphyxiation with an inert gas, according to capital-punishment experts.
Smith, 58, is one of only two people alive in the U.S. to have survived an execution attempt after Alabama botched his previously scheduled execution by lethal injection in November 2022 when multiple attempts to insert an intravenous line failed.