Death by Nitrogen Asphyxiation: Will Oklahoma Lead the Nation in Humane Executions?

In my book, Oklahoma hasn’t had a lot to brag about: not economically, socially, politically, or culturally. However, it is doing something that I have advocated for the better part of the last quarter-century. Going forward, it has pledged to use nitrogen hypoxia (asphyxiation) as the method of executing convicted defendants in death-penalty cases.

Some will recall that lethal injection has been problematic in Texas and in Oklahoma for years. Hospira — the sole United States manufacturer of sodium thiopental — has stopped producing it, and there is a world-wide shortage based on an increasing number of countries’ restrictions on the use of drugs in executions. Several states have switched from the three-drug “cocktail” for lethal injections to a single dose of pentabarbital, a drug used to euthanize animals.

However, that is a new procedure and may face a number of legal challenges at both the state and federal levels on the grounds that it may not pass the 8th Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel or unusual” punishment. The main concern in previous pleadings opposing lethal injections, as well as the use of hanging; the electric chair; the firing squad; and the gas chamber, is that each method has the tendency to cause unnecessary pain and/or physical torture.

Oklahoma has many options in terms of the administration of capital punishment. However, it conducted a recent study, Nitrogen Induced Hypoxia as a Form of…