Capital Punishment: To be or Not to be?

A spine-chilling news of a man, Kenneth Smith being executed by Nitrogen gas has come forward from Alabama, a US state. In fact, this incident was so inhuman that even the White House released a statement saying, “The president has long said, and has had deep, deep, deep, concerns with how the death penalty is implemented and whether it is consistent with our values”. It must be noted that capital punishment has been abolished in 23 states, while the governors of six others — Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee have put a hold on its use.

Not just the White House but even the United Nations and the European Union have condemned the execution by Nitrogen gas.

UN human rights chief Volker Turk said, “This novel and untested method of suffocation by nitrogen gas may amount to torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

Yasmin Cader of the American Civil Liberties Union said Smith “should have never been killed, let alone in such a gruesome manner.” “It’s past time for our country to put an end to the death penalty instead of inventing new and more heinous ways of carrying it out,” Cader said.

You might be thinking why an execution is causing such shockwaves internationally and bringing condemnation not only from the United Nations and the European Union but also from its own federal government. The reason for such a reaction is that execution using Nitrogen gas is an experimental and untested method, making Kenneth Smith basically a guinea pig for human experimentation.

While the prison authorities claimed that death by nitrogen gas will be instantaneous and painless, witnesses, including Kenneth Smith’s spiritual advisor Reverend Jeff Hood, described the ordeal which looked as if it was straight from a Hollywood “horror show”.

Jeff Hood said, “They said all along that this was going to be nearly instantaneous. They were told this is going to be quick, easy and painless. They kept saying this is the most humane way society has ever figured out how to execute people. That he would be gone, unconscious, in seconds. What we saw last night was minutes, minutes, and minutes of a horror show”, adding that Smith looked like a “fish out of water, flapping over and over again.”

Another local news outlet AL.com reported that after the nitrogen gas was administered, Smith “began writhing and thrashing for approximately two to four minutes, followed by around five minutes of heavy breathing.”

Meanwhile, amidst all the backlash, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall defended the decision of the execution using the untested method, saying through Nitrogen asphyxiation was carried out by the authorities in a “professional manner”. “We will definitely have more nitrogen hypoxia executions in Alabama, I believe that number is 43,” Marshall told reporters. None of which are currently scheduled for this year. Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm also said Smith appeared to be “holding his breath as long as he could” and that there was involuntary movement and gasping.

The Debate

The death by pumping Nitrogen gas through a face mask has given more traction to the age-old debate of whether capital punishment should still exist especially when we are living in a modern 21st-century world. In this debate, there exist three viewpoints.

One which supports capital punishment, which says that if a person can go so far as to kill and take another (person’s) life, then he has no right to live and it is the right of the state to punish him in the exact way. Basically following the principle of ‘an eye for an eye’.

The second viewpoint is of those people who oppose capital punishment. According to this philosophy, since a state cannot give life, it also does not have the right to take away life through capital punishment. This follows the principle of ‘an eye for an eye, makes the whole world blind’.

The third viewpoint is a much more balanced and moderate viewpoint which says that while capital punishment is not completely wrong and should not be banned outrightly, it must still be heavily regulated and must be used in the rarest and rare cases such as that of terrorism, brutal rape-muders, etc. this viewpoint also believed that even though the state is taking away a life, it must still do so with dignity and must not cause the person unnecessary pain and torture to the convict.

Kenneth Smith was on death row for more than three decades after being convicted along with his accomplice, John Parker of the 1988 murder-for-hire of a pastor’s wife in which both of them were paid $1000 to kill Elizabeth Sennett. Kenneth’s partner in the crime, John Parker was executed in 2010 by lethal injection, whereas Smith was subjected to a botched execution attempt by lethal injection in 2022 as prison officials failed to set intravenous lines to administer the lethal injection.

Notably, Kenneth Smith’s last words before being killed by the Nitrogen gas on Thursday were, “Tonight, Alabama caused humanity to take a step backward. I am leaving with love, peace and light.”

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