The Community of Sant'Egidio (Sant'Egidio in Italy, where it was born and from where it expanded to the world: today it is present in more than 70 countries) has launched an international campaign to try to stop the execution in Alabama of Kenneth Smith. This man is 58 years old and has been on death row for 35 years. He was sentenced in 1988 to life imprisonment by a jury that found him guilty of the murder of a woman.
Using a power then allowed by law, the judge disregarded the jury's request for a conviction and changed it to the death penalty. These prerogatives were repealed in 2017 and are no longer in effect in any US state, but they do not affect those previously applied, such as Kenneth Smith's. His case is terrifying for another reason: he is scheduled to be executed by suffocating him with nitrogen.
There is the paradox that drowning or hypoxia by nitrogen is a prohibited method for the sacrifice of animals for "cruel and inhumane". The Community of Sant Egidi, an altruistic, ecumenical and independent entity, although it is often considered "the Vatican's shadow diplomacy", has been fighting for years against capital punishment all over the world because "the culture of death can only be overcome with the culture of life”.
This organization collects signatures (the link appears on our website) to ask for clemency before the governor of Alabama, Republican Kay Ivey. The execution does not yet have a date, but everything makes us fear that it will be imminent. It will be the second time that this fox will leave his cell on death row for the scaffold. He already left her on November 17, 2022, when they unsuccessfully tried to end his life with a lethal injection.
Supplying the lethal cocktail of drugs requires the convict to receive a puncture in each arm. Kenneth Smith, however, has thin or fleeting veins, difficult to puncture. Officials managed to insert a needle into one arm, but time was running out and they could not insert the second catheter. The legal deadline for the execution expired at midnight and prison officials had to interrupt it at 11:21 p.m.
Sant Egidi has a lot to do with the almost total disappearance of executions by lethal injection following another campaign against pharmaceutical companies. Giants such as Pfizer claimed they produced drugs such as pentobarbital for hospitals and were not responsible for other uses, but the pressure was so great that in 2016 the industry refused to supply more substances that could be used for capital punishment.
Lethal injections were encouraged to avoid "unusually cruel" procedures, such as the gas chamber or the electric chair. Organizations such as the Community of Sant Egidi itself or Amnesty International question the supposed goodness of this system and remember that, even if sedation prevents the prisoner's convulsions, death can be agonizing, long, very striking and with a terrible stinging sensation internal
In any case, nitrogen asphyxiation does not improve the situation. "It is an even more brutal method", denounces the Community of Sant Egidi. An important part of the air contains nitrogen. But if all the oxygen is taken from this air and nitrogen is left, death is inevitable. And very painful. This is the argument for not using it on animals. But, in addition to being inevitable and painful, the death penalty is irreversible. And this is the main problem, no matter how it is applied: irreversibility. Many studies have noted that at least 4% of execution victims in the US were innocent.
