After a Botched Execution, Alabama Is Trying an Untested New Method

It was Nov. 17, 2022, and Kenneth Smith was lying on a gurney inside Alabama’s execution chamber, his arms and legs strapped down as he waited to be put to death. Mr. Smith, who had been on death row for more than a quarter-century after being convicted of murdering a woman, recalled thanking God for his final week alive and thinking of his family.

At the time, the state was using the same method of execution that has been used in the vast majority of modern U.S. executions: lethal injection. And like many other states, Alabama had problems. That night, a team of people tried and repeatedly failed to insert an intravenous line into Mr. Smith’s arms and hands and, eventually, a vein near his heart. The jabbing stopped — according to his lawyers, who recounted in court documents Mr. Smith’s experiences that night — when prison officials decided that they might not have time to carry out the execution before the death warrant expired at midnight.

Now, more than a year later, Alabama is preparing once again this week to execute Mr. Smith, this time employing a method that has never been used in a U.S. execution: nitrogen hypoxia. Under this method, which has been used in assisted suicides in Europe, Mr. Smith will be fitted with a mask and administered a flow of nitrogen gas, effectively depriving him of oxygen until he dies.

The execution, scheduled for Thursday evening, is the latest turn in the fraught battle over executions in the U.S., where a growing number of states are banning the death penalty; those that retain the punishment are finding it difficult to carry out. Pressure from activist and medical groups has made it challenging for prison officials to procure lethal drugs, and a series of executions in the last two years were plagued by trouble finding veins. Alabama is one of several states that are looking at alternatives, including nitrogen hypoxia, and some states have recently authorized the use of a firing squad.