Equipment manufactured by the subsidiary of a Quebec company must be used for executions in the United States, say organizations critical of the prison system.
The state of Alabama plans to execute inmate Kenneth Smith on Thursday by asphyxiation with nitrogen, a colorless, odorless gas that deprives the body of oxygen when inhaled.
The mask and tube that would serve as a respirator are made by Allegro Industries, according to the U.S.-based nonprofits Worth Rises and Responsible Business Initiative for Justice.
Allegro, a South Carolina company, is a subsidiary of Quebec-based Walter Surface Technologies, itself partly owned by Toronto-based private equity firm Onex.
“In our opinion, no one in any society should profit from trafficking in death,” said Dana Floberg, campaigns director at Worth Rises. There is an argument to be made that this is also inhumane, because it amounts to conducting experimental tests on a human being. »
Kenneth Smith, 58, would be the first inmate in the United States to be executed by this untested method.
Earlier this month, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said the method could cause serious suffering. The agency had “serious concerns that the execution of Mr. Smith in these circumstances would constitute a violation of the prohibition of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
“We fear that nitrogen asphyxiation will lead to a painful and humiliating death,” four UN special rapporteurs on execution, torture, mental health and the system said in a statement on January 3. judicial — respectively: Morris Tidball-Binz, Alice Jill Edwards, Tlaeng Mofokeng and Margaret Satterthwaite.
As a method of mammalian euthanasia, the American Veterinary Medical Association only permits nitrogen asphyxiation for pigs. Other species should first be rendered unconscious “via an acceptable method,” the Association’s 2020 guidelines state.
However, Alabama does not provide any initial sedative for inmates who are to be executed by this method.
The companies named by the activist organizations did not respond to requests for comment.
Prison authorities are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain the chemicals needed for the lethal injection commonly used in executions because pharmaceutical companies ban the use of their products for this purpose.
Several states, including Oklahoma and Mississippi, have therefore authorized nitrogen gas as a means of executing inmates on death row — although Thursday’s execution in Alabama would be a first in the United States.
Some companies have also decided not to participate in this method. Airgas, the largest distributor of packaged gas in the United States, announced earlier this month that it would not supply nitrogen to Alabama prisons.
“Despite the philosophical and intellectual debate over the death penalty itself, the provision of nitrogen for humane execution is not consistent with our company values,” said spokeswoman Kim Menard.
Last February, under pressure from activists and religious groups, Tennessee-based FDR Safety announced it was withdrawing from a contract with Alabama to help the state develop the new safety protocol. execution by nitrogen asphyxiation.
Hitman
Kenneth Smith and another man were convicted in 1989 of murdering a woman for hire in northwest Alabama.
Smith and John Forrest Parker each received $1,000 to murder Elizabeth Sennett on behalf of her husband, Pastor Charles Sennett, who was heavily in debt and wanted to collect life insurance, according to prosecutors.
After a retrial in 1996, Smith was again convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death by electrocution. His co-defendant Parker was executed by lethal injection in 2010. Pastor Sennett, meanwhile, committed suicide during the investigation.
Smith has languished on “death row” for more than thirty years. In 2022, Alabama Department of Corrections prison officials botched an execution by lethal injection, piercing his body repeatedly over several hours but failing to find a vein, before calling off the execution.
On January 10, a federal judge approved Smith’s execution by nitrogen hypoxia. And last week, the Alabama attorney general’s office told federal appeals court judges that it was “the most painless and humane method of execution known to man.” “.
But according to some doctors and opponents, it is unclear how exactly Smith will feel during this new procedure.
“How much effect the inmate will experience from the nitrogen itself, no one knows,” Dr. Jeffrey Keller, president of the American College of Prison Physicians, wrote in an email. “It’s never been done before. This is an experimental procedure. »
Canada abolished the death penalty in 1963, when governments began commuting all capital sentences. In 1976, the death penalty for murder was banned by law. In 1999, the death penalty for other crimes – spying for the enemy, for example – was also banned.
The last execution in Canada took place in December 1962, by hanging, at Don Prison in Toronto.
With information from the Associated Press