Professor Deborah Denno spoke to the Washington Post on Alabama’s controversial proposal to become the first state to execute an inmate by making him breathe pure nitrogen.
Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University who studies the death penalty, said “it’s pretty appalling” that the state would offer so little detail in its protocol.
“For a method that’d never been used, it’s incredibly vague,” Denno said.
Alabama prison officials were forced into using nitrogen gas because legislators approved the method before having a protocol, Denno said. “They painted themselves into a legislative corner.”
The United States has had six methods of execution over the years. “They’ve all been bad,” Denno said, but she considers the firing squad to be the most humane.
Denno said new methods are usually determined using specious science that leads to botched killings and undue pain. She fears a repeat with nitrogen gas.
The movement to use nitrogen gas in capital punishment came from what Denno said was a 14-page typo-heavy paper from about a decade agothat wasn’t published in a peer-reviewed journal. Denno said a technology consultant from California named Stuart Creque wrote in the mid-90s about the nitrogen gas idea in the conservative National Review publication.
