Montgomery, Alabama
An Alabama death row inmate filed a lawsuit Thursday that challenges the constitutionality of nitrogen gas executions, arguing that the first person in the nation put to death by that method shook violently for several minutes in “a human experiment that officials botched miserably.”
The lawsuit seeks a declaratory judgment that the current nitrogen gas asphyxiation protocol violates the inmate’s constitutional right to protection from cruel and unusual punishment. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed Smith’s execution to proceed last month. The lawsuit contends that media and witness accounts of the execution contradict the state’s prediction to the courts that the nitrogen gas would render Smith unconscious “within seconds.”
The state had previously attempted to execute Smith in 2022, but the lethal injection was called off at the last minute because authorities couldn’t connect an IV line.
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