This Thursday evening, in Alabama, a man should be executed for the first time by suffocation with nitrogen, a technique denounced by the United Nations. However, the mask that will be used during this unprecedented intervention is produced by an American company which is owned by business people in Quebec and Toronto, according to an NGO.
Allegro Industries, a South Carolina-based company, manufactures the controversial mask, according to an investigation by the US organization Worth Rises, which aims to dismantle the incarceration industry in the United States and targets companies that profit from its activities. which will be used to diffuse the gas which will asphyxiate the condemned man, Kenneth Eugene Smith, on the evening of January 25.
However, a company whose head office is in Pointe-Claire, Walter Technologies pour surfaces, has owned Allegro Industries since 2022. And the ultimate owner of Walter Technologies is an investment platform from Onex Corporation, a well-established firm. known from Toronto which is listed on the Stock Exchange and controlled by businessman Gerry Schwartz. Onex owns, among others, the air carrier WestJet Airlines.
The organization Worth Rises has sent thousands of emails to managers of companies linked to Allegro Industries since January 19 asking them to ban their masks from being used in this killing. “ [Les entreprises] Walter Surface Technologies and Allegro Industries are dedicated to safety, but after Thursday, they will be known for something else: death. Alabama plans to use Allegro’s respirator masks in its first nitrogen execution on January 25. Taking advantage of this event raises serious moral and ethical issues,” reads the letter addressed to Todd McGee, Mark Wilcox, Michael Lay and Wole James, all executives of the targeted companies.
Worth Rises received no response. “We shared the information. They received 3000 emails each, but we received nothing from them. They can all call Alabama and say hold our masks! They can throw their weight around like other companies have done,” Dana Floberg, director of corporate campaigns for Worth Rises, told me Tuesday.
I also spent Tuesday trying to contact the Canadian and American managers of the companies mentioned. I was only slightly luckier than Worth Rises.
At Walter Technologies’ Quebec headquarters, a human resources manager who answered my phone exclaimed: “Ah yes, the product is our company’s!” ”, when I asked him to put me in touch with the president of the company, Marc-André Aubé, to talk about the mask and the execution.
A few hours later, a customer service employee told me that Walter Technologies would not comment, thanking me for my numerous calls. No denial of the information received, no “call so-and-so in such and such a company, he is responsible for the file”. Just not a word.
However, it is the end of a man’s life that is at stake. An end of life that many fear will be unbearably painful, particularly if the mask used is not completely waterproof.
Kenneth Eugene Smith has been behind bars for 35 years. At his trial, the jury sentenced him to life in prison for killing the wife of an unfaithful pastor who ordered the crime. The judge overturned the sentence and imposed the death penalty.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
A controversial mask will be used to diffuse the gas which will asphyxiate the condemned man, Kenneth Eugene Smith, on the evening of January 25.
Mr. Smith was scheduled to be executed in November 2022 by lethal injection, but the execution was abandoned after two hours of unsuccessful attempts to find a vein to install the IV. He was the second person to experience a botched execution by injection.
Alabama decided to do it again using another method, that of nitrogen gas, never tested on a human being. The opposition was not long in coming. Notably, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, informed of the imminent execution, considered that it could be assimilated to torture or other cruel punishment or treatment. , inhumane or degrading.
In other words, he believes the new method violates international law and a treaty to which the United States is subject. The Alabama Supreme Court sees no problem and gave the green light. At the judicial level, only last-minute appeals remain to stop the execution.
We could be cynical and say that in the circumstances, Worth Rises’ efforts are in vain. That a supplier who withdraws would leave his place to another. This would, in my opinion, be a mistake.
“The pharmaceutical industry took a position on the death penalty a long time ago and prohibits its products from being used in lethal injections,” notes Worth Rises in the missive sent to companies allegedly linked to the manufacture of the disputed mask. “That’s why drugs are hard to acquire and why states like Alabama are looking for new ways to kill people.”
Moreover, Worth Rises, which works hand in hand with ACLU, a civil rights giant in the United States, managed to convince two companies, Air Liquide and FDR Safety, to end their collaboration with Alabama in prior to this execution.
It is both a question of ethics and reputation. And this is even more salient for companies operating in Canada, a country where the death penalty was abolished in 1976.
Who wants to be associated with torture directly or via gang? Who wants blood on their hands? If corporations don’t have the power to change Alabama’s laws, they can at least refuse to be complicit.
With Francis Vailles, The Press