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You may have never heard of the method used by America to punish a criminal convicted of murder. Alabama has used a first-of-its-kind method to execute a murder convict by inhaling nitrogen gas. With this, the debate regarding death penalty has erupted again in America. State authorities say the new method is humane, but critics have called it cruel and experimental. Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, was inhaled nitrogen gas through a face mask on Thursday, resulting in his death from lack of oxygen, officials said.
Smith was declared dead at an Alabama prison at 8:25 p.m. In America, the provision of giving death penalty by lethal injection started after 1982 and since then this method is generally adopted for giving death penalty. This is the first case of death penalty by inhaling nitrogen in America. The state had also tried to give death penalty in 2022 to Smith, convicted in a 1988 case of murdering a man’s wife by taking betel nut from him, but it was stopped at the last minute due to some technical problem.
death by inhaling nitrogen
Some people are calling the new method of death given to a person convicted in a murder case as humane and some as inhumane. Let us tell you that after losing the legal battle against the new method of punishment, Smith was given death penalty by inhaling nitrogen. Smith’s lawyers claimed that the state was using him as a test subject to experiment with a punishment method that would violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual methods of punishment. The US Supreme Court rejected Smith’s petition on Thursday night. (AP)
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