Arkansas Adopts Nitrogen Gas for Executions

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed into law a bill that allows the use of nitrogen gas to execute condemned murderers.  Andres DeMillo of the Associated Press reports that Arkansas joins Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma which have approved the use of the gas for executions. Death penalty opponents and most of the mainstream media are criticizing its use as unconstitutional, although it has been approved by multiple courts. Opponents have characterized its use as death by suffocation.

“The decision to use nitrogen suffocation as an execution method is a dangerous and regressive move that puts Arkansas out of step with national trends away from the death penalty,” Megan Bailey, a spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties of Arkansas, said in a statement.

The fact remains that a condemned murderer breathing pure nitrogen gas does not suffocate, they go to sleep just as do the several hundred people who die accidentally every year from carbon monoxide poisoning. It is likely that more death penalty states will adopt nitrogen because it does not require injection protocol or specialized training; it is readily available and inexpensive, it does not cause pain and it presents no danger to prison staff. For these reasons it also really upsets death penalty opponents.