Move follows Alabama’s recent killing of death row inmate Kenneth Smith using previously untested method

Move follows Alabama’s recent killing of death row inmate Kenneth Smith using previously untested method

Three of the largest manufacturers of medical-grade nitrogen gas in the US have barred their products from being used in executions, following Alabama’s recent killing of the death row inmate Kenneth Smith using a previously untested method known as nitrogen hypoxia.

The three companies have confirmed to the Guardian that they have put in place mechanisms that will prevent their nitrogen cylinders falling into the hands of departments of correction in death penalty states. The move by the trio marks the first signs of corporate action to stop medical nitrogen, which is designed to preserve life, being used for the exact opposite – killing people.

The green shoots of a corporate blockade for nitrogen echoes the almost total boycott that is now in place for medical drugs used in lethal injections. That boycott has made it so difficult for death penalty states to procure drugs such as pentobarbital and midazolam that a growing number are turning to nitrogen as an alternative killing technique.

Now, nitrogen producers are engaging in their own efforts to prevent the abuse of their products. The march has been led by Airgas, which is owned by the French multinational Air Liquide.

  • @[email protected]
    17•10 months ago

    I believe they’re referencing this:

    The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that state prisoners have no constitutional right to present new evidence in federal court to support their claims that they were represented at trial and on appeal in state courts by unqualified or otherwise deficient lawyers. The vote was 6-to-3, along ideological lines.

    . . .

    On Monday Thomas wrote the majority decision hollowing out that 2012 ruling on behalf of the court’s new six-justice conservative super majority.

    He said that federal courts may not hear “new evidence” obtained after conviction to show how deficient the trial or appellate lawyer in state court was. To allow such evidence to be presented in federal court, he said, “encourages prisoners to sandbag state courts,” depriving the states of “the finality that is essential to both the retributive and deterrent function of criminal law.”

    . . .

    Writing for the three dissenters, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the decision “perverse,” and “illogical.” The Sixth Amendment “guarantees criminal defendants the right to effective assistance of counsel at trial,” she said. “Today, however, the court hamstrings the federal courts’ authority to safeguard that right.”

    NPR Source

    This is so from 2022.