Oklahoma has announced plans to use nitrogen gas to execute death-row inmates, as states struggle to find alternatives to their dwindling supplies of lethal injection drugs.
The southwestern state would be the first in the US to use the procedure, for which protocol has yet to be established. The decision came after a number of drug manufacturers barred their products from being used in lethal injections, leaving states with a shortage of options.
Announcing the plan on Wednesday, Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter called the nitrogen gas procedure “effective, simple to administer, [and] easy to obtain”.
“Executions are the most profound application of state power,” he said in a statement. “I believe in justice for victims and their families, and in capital punishment as appropriate for dealing with those whose commit these crimes.”
Oklahoma adopted the procedure as a backup method in 2015, but has not used it – or developed a protocol for using it – in the years since. Mr Hunter said implementation could take three to four months, on top of a 150-day waiting period for federal review, according to local news station KWTV.
Others were not as optimistic about the development. Dale A Baich, one of the attorneys challenging the state’s current execution procedure, doubted that the new protocol would be an improvement.
“This method has never been used before and is experimental,” Mr Baich told the Washington Post. “Oklahoma is once again asking us to trust it as officials ‘learn-on-the-job,’ through a new execution procedure and method.”
He added: “How can we trust Oklahoma to get this right when the state’s recent history reveals a culture of carelessness and mistakes in executions?”
Oklahoma suspended executions in 2015, after officials made a number of high-profile errors. In 2014, a problem with an IV left one inmate writhing on the bed for 20 minutes before his execution was called off. The next year, officials were discovered to have used the wrong drug in a different execution.
Now, the state is one of many experimenting with alternative execution methods as their supply of lethal injection drugs dissipates. In recent years, Florida has adopted new lethal injection drugs, Tennessee has gone back to using the electric chair and Utah has gone back to the firing squad.
In a statement on Oklahoma's new procedure, the local ACLU chapter said: "The question Oklahomans must ask is not whether they support the death penalty, but rather, do they trust this government with the power to kill its citizens."
