OKLAHOMA CITY — An execution in Alabama Thursday that would be the first to use nitrogen gas follows a long history of problems with lethal injections since Texas first used the method in 1982, including difficulties in finding usable veins and obtaining the necessary medications.
Here’s a look at some of the issues facing death penalty states across the country and why some, including Alabama, are considering alternative methods.
Alabama tried but failed to execute Kenneth Eugene Smith by lethal injection in 2022 for his role in the 1988 murder-for-hire of a pastor’s wife.
The Alabama Department of Corrections called off the execution when the team failed to connect the required two intravenous lines to Smith. Officials then tried a central line, which involved placing a catheter into a large vein, but were unable to complete the process before the death sentence expired.
This isn’t the first time Alabama has had trouble setting up an IV line with a deadline looming.
In another scheduled execution in 2022, prison officials jabbed Alan Eugene Miller with needles for more than an hour in an attempt to find a vein, and at one point left him hanging vertically from a gurney before state officials decided to call off the execution.
In that case, Alabama agreed not to use lethal injection to put Miller to death and any future attempt to execute him will use nitrogen hypoxia.
Numerous other states that use lethal injections have encountered various problems with the execution method, including problems finding usable veins, needles dislodging or problems obtaining or using the deadly chemicals.
“They tried to do a lethal injection … and they failed,” said Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University and an expert on execution methods. “The same thing happened with electrocution. It’s just a continuing theme of pushing for executions regardless of the costs involved, and that’s what has driven this move to nitrogen gas.”
In Oklahoma, convicted inmate Clayton Lockett writhed, gritted his teeth and tried to lift himself off the gurney in 2014 after being declared unconscious when the state used a new drug, the sedative midazolam, in the three-drug method. Although prison officials attempted to stop the execution, Lockett was pronounced dead 43 minutes after the procedure began.
Investigations later revealed that a single IV line in Lockett’s groin, which was covered with a sheet, became dislodged and the deadly chemicals were injected into the tissue surrounding the injection site rather than directly into the bloodstream.
In Ohio in 2006, Joseph Clark’s lethal injection was halted while prison technicians found a suitable vein, which then collapsed and Clark’s arm began to swell. Clark raised his head and said, “It’s not working. It does not work.” Technicians eventually found another vein, but Clark was not pronounced dead until nearly 90 minutes after the trial began.
Nitrogen gas isn’t the only method states are exploring. South Carolina has passed a law allowing a firing squad in 2021, following the inability to obtain lethal injection drugs. The state developed protocols and prepared to use the firing squad before a legal challenge that the firing squad and the electric chair are cruel and unconstitutional. A firing squad has not been used as an execution method in the US since Utah in 2010, but five states currently allow it.
Electrocution, hanging and other forms of lethal gas also remain on the books in several death penalty states.
Many states have had difficulty obtaining the deadly chemicals used to carry out executions. Manufacturers of many of these drugs have banned the use of their products to carry out executions or stopped producing them altogether, causing many states to go to great lengths to protect the drugs’ origins.
Before Oklahoma secured a source of the sedative midazolam for its three-drug lethal injection method in 2020, the state planned to resume executions with nitrogen gas after the prison’s director said he was forced to deal with ‘shady individuals’ who may have access to them.
“I called all over the world, to the back streets of the Indian subcontinent,” Joe Allbaugh, then head of Oklahoma’s prison system, said at the time.
Nitrogen hypoxia is a proposed execution method that forces the prisoner to breathe only nitrogen, depriving him or her of the oxygen necessary to maintain bodily functions.
No state has used nitrogen hypoxia to carry out a death sentence. In 2018, Alabama became the third state – along with Oklahoma and Mississippi – to authorize the use of nitrogen gas to execute prisoners.