The state of Alabama has proved that it is incapable of consistently carrying out executions that conform to the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. After a series of botched lethal injections in 2022, correctional officials in Alabama ushered in a new method of execution that would sidestep the legal challenges resulting from those debacles. This new method amounts to suffocation by gas, specifically by the inhalation of pure nitrogen, a technique that was proposed by a California screenwriter in a 1995 National Review article titled “Killing With Kindness: Capital Punishment by Nitrogen Asphyxiation.” Unlike past execution techniques known for horrendous and grisly outcomes—such as hanging, electrocution, poison gas, and lethal injection—nitrogen hypoxia was promised
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