Imagine a movie in which state executioners strap a man to a gurney and affix a do-it-yourself mask to his face — one crafted to kill by making the man breathe pure nitrogen gas. Then after the man flops around on the gurney like a fish out of water, tortured by having the oxygen slowly and painfully squeezed from his body, instead of abandoning the practice, the state — in the movie, mind you — executes more men in the same exact way, making it the “new normal?”
Oh wait. No need to imagine. This dystopian horror is happening — in real life — in Alabama.
As reported by the Associated Press (AP), on September 26, during the 1,600 execution in the United States in the modern era, Alan Miller was tortured to death via an abominable and still-experimental method of execution dubbed “nitrogen hypoxia” — which is just a cold and clinical way of saying that, in 2024, Alabama has started to gas human beings to death.
AP reporter Kim Chandler, an eyewitness to Miller’s execution, wrote that as the nitrogen gas filled the mask, Miller “shook and trembled on the gurney for about two minutes with his body at times pulling against the restraints. That was followed by about six minutes of periodic gulping breaths before he became still.” (As an aside, imagine the longest scene in a movie you’ve seen where some character was choked to death. I guarantee the scene was exponentially shorter than the violent, gasping deaths Alabama’s two nitrogen-gassing executions have thus far yielded.)
Chandler continued: “Alabama officials and advocates have argued over whether [Kenneth] Smith — [the first man Alabama put to death by nitrogen-gassing in January] — suffered an unconstitutional level of pain during an execution after he shook in seizure-like spasms for several minutes, at times rocking the gurney. Smith then gasped for breath for several minutes. The shaking exhibited by Miller was similar to what was seen at the first nitrogen gas execution but did not seem as long or as violent.”
On the social media platform “X,” Ivana Hrynkiw Shatara, a veteran journalist for al.com who also witnessed Miller’s execution, comparably posted shortly thereafter that “Miller did not shake as violently or as long as Kenneth Smith, per mine and other media witness accounts.” One X-user significantly pushed back in what has to be — at least as it concerns the death penalty — one of the most underrated replies in the history of X, formerly known as “Twitter.”
Dr. Joel Zivot, an associate professor in the department of anesthesiology at Emory University School of Medicine replied to Shatara: “Respectfully, your accounting does not mean much. Smith’s autopsy after nitrogen gas execution showed bloody froth in the lungs and a swollen brain. I suspect Miller’s autopsy will show the same.”
Zivot was even more blunt in his response on X to journalist Lauren Gill, another eyewitness to Miller’s execution. Gill also took to X shortly after Miller’s execution to post this statement which became viral — amassing an amazing amount of views for a statement about an execution. Gill wrote: “I was a witness for Alabama’s execution of Alan Miller by nitrogen gas tonight. Again, it did not go as state officials promised. Miller visibly struggled for roughly two minutes, shaking and pulling at his restraints. He then spent the next 5-6 min[utes] intermittently gasping for air[.]”
Acerbically, Zivot replied to Gill: “Time for the media to stop viewing these executions. You can’t spot the degree of cruelty and the state and the court are indifferent to your account.”
Now this wasn’t your normal “Twitter-fight,” nor is Zivot your normal Twitter troll. He was saying something important. Something more than just people on social media need to hear.
It wasn’t, as Zivot and I published together in these pages in January, that “Alabama’s nitrogen gas execution[s] will be cruel and unusual punishment” — though people do need to hear and read that as much as possible. The frustration Zivot was communicating on X dovetailed with what he told ABC News before Miller’s execution; “he reviewed Smith’s autopsy which showed blueness of the skin, pulmonary congestion and edema, which he says indicated [Smith] died from being asphyxiated ‘slowly and painfully.’”
Zivot is not at all shy about putting forth his expert medical opinion in the service of abolition — such as when he and I collaborated on “On slicing and sticking condemned men in Alabama,” about Alabama’s savage lethal injection protocol. (And, for your information, Alabama has a lethal injection of death penalty volunteer Derrick Dearman on October 17; I wrote about Dearman’s situation in May in “Execution volunteerism: Yet another death penalty horror.”)
And, for your information again, Zivot is not being coy on what he, as a respected medical professional, is observing about Alabama’s “nitrogen hypoxia” protocol. Pointedly Zivot told ABC News: “If that’s what Alabama thinks is a job well done, well then there seems to be a wide disagreement on what a job well-done means.” Mincing no words, Zivot continued: “So, if this is again, what they intend[ed], then they intend[ed] to kill him cruelly and they will intend to kill Alan Miller in the same cruel way.”
Zivot’s frustration is easily understood when you consider Robert Frost’s poem, “Neither Out Far Nor In Deep.” This is an excerpt of that gem with a few slight meaningful modifications: “The people along the sand all turn and look one way [for evidence of nitrogen-hypoxia torture]. They turn their back on the land [and experts like Zivot]. They look at the sea all day [and the ability of eyewitness reporters to adequately convey the patent torture they see]….But wherever the truth may be — the water comes ashore, and the people look at the sea. They cannot look out far. They cannot look in deep. But when was that ever a bar to any watch they keep?”
Stephen Cooper is a former D.C. public defender who worked as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills, California. Follow him on “X”/Twitter at @SteveCooperEsq
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Alabama arrogantly asphyxiates another condemned man | STEPHEN COOPER
Local News
