Ohio | Bill seeks to add nitrogen hypoxia as method of execution

House Bill 36, introduced in the Ohio Legislature by Republican Reps. Brian Stewart and Phil Plummer, proposes adding nitrogen hypoxia as a method of execution, replacing oxygen intake with pure odorless and colorless nitrous gas. Plummer and Stewart were not available for comment.

Although Gov. Mike DeWine said no executions will occur during his time as governor, many have expressed worries due to his term ending in 2026, according to the Associated Press. Earlier this year, Attorney General David Yost, an outspoken supporter of the bill, announced his bid for Governor.

In a news release from the General Assembly in 2024, Yost and other supporters voiced their reasons for the introduction of the bill.

“There must be accountability for offenders convicted of the most heinous crimes and prisoners who continue to flout the law behind bars,” Yost wrote. “The pursuit of justice is a journey, and closure remains elusive for victims’ families until a sentence is fully executed."

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Ohio was experiencing trouble obtaining the drugs used to carry out lethal injection without putting public health at risk in 2019.

Pharmaceutical companies said they were no longer willing to sell medicines to state agencies if they suspected they would be used for lethal injection as opposed to therapeutic use.

However, Yost noted the availability of nitrogen hypoxia as a way to eliminate the issue and add a more available option for the death penalty.

Opponents of the bill raised concerns regarding the humanity of nitrogen hypoxia, including Ohioans to Stop Executions, a non-profit organization aiming to dismantle the death penalty in Ohio.

Executive Director of OTSE Kevin Werner commented on the inhumanity of the death penalty and voiced his disagreement with the term “nitrogen hypoxia.” Werner said OTSE prefers to call the form of execution “nitrogen suffocation,” believing it to be more fitting for the act.

Werner mentioned Senate Bill 164, passed in 2023, which outlawed the use of nitrogen hypoxia as a method to execute animals in Ohio. Werner said the passing of SB 164 indicates previous recognition of the inhumane nature of nitrogen hypoxia.

Nitrogen hypoxia was first used as a method of the death penalty in the U.S. in Alabama for Kenneth Smith in 2024. The state claimed the death would be painless. However, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, several witnesses said Smith suffered for an extensive amount of time before dying.

Werner also addressed problems with the death penalty being successful in preventing crimes, saying the death penalty distracts from the real problems in the criminal justice system.

Werner said innocent people are frequently sentenced to death, the death penalty is more expensive, and prosecutors apply the death penalty as a punishment in some counties but not in others.

According to Ohio’s 2024 Capital Crimes report, in some states, capital cases exceed the cost of life imprisonment cases by as much as $1 million to $3 million per case. If these estimates apply to Ohio, the extra cost of imposing the death penalty on inmates currently on Death Row ranges between $116 million and $348 million.

Werner raised concerns regarding the use of nitrous gas being dangerous not just for the inmate, but also for the employees administering it.

According to AP News, Alabama’s Department of Corrections required Kenneth Smith’s Spiritual Advisor, Jeff Hood, to sign a waiver acknowledging possible exposure to the gas.

“How is the state going to ensure that the (Department of Rehabilitation and Correction) workers and the witnesses and the media and everybody who has to be there in that room, how are they going to make sure that those people aren't put at risk and killed if there's a leak?” Werner said. “Nitrogen gas doesn't have an odor, it doesn't have a smell, so how are people going to be kept safe?”

The bill is currently in the House Committee, and if passed, would also restore confidentiality to drug manufacturers for lethal injection drugs, and extend that to nitrogen hypoxia providers.

Source: thepostathens.com, Fin Smith, April 15, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

Comments

South Carolina executes Mikal Mahdi

Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers A man facing the death penalty for committing two murders was executed by firing squad on Friday, the second such execution in the US state of South Carolina this year. Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers, an off-duty police officer, and the murder of a convenience store employee three days earlier. According to a statement from the prison, "the execution was performed by a three-person firing squad at 6:01 pm (2201 GMT)," with Mahdi pronounced dead four minutes later.

Afghanistan | Four men publicly executed by Taliban with relatives of victims shooting them 'six or seven times' at sport stadium

Four men have been publicly executed by the Taliban, with relatives of their victims shooting them several times in front of spectators at a sport stadium. Two men were shot around six to seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the centre of Afghanistan's Badghis province, witnesses told an AFP journalist in the city. The men had been 'sentenced to retaliatory punishment' for shooting other men, after their cases were 'examined very precisely and repeatedly', the statement said. 'The families of the victims were offered amnesty and peace but they refused.'

USA | Why the firing squad may be making a comeback

South Carolina plans to execute Mikal Mahdi on Friday for the murder of a police officer, draping a hood over his head and firing three bullets into his heart. The choice to die by firing squad – rather than lethal injection or the electric chair – was Mahdi’s own, his attorney said last month: “Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi has chosen the lesser of three evils.” If it proceeds, Mahdi’s execution would be the latest in a recent string of events that have put the spotlight on the firing squad as a handful of US death penalty states explore alternatives to lethal injection, by far the nation’s dominant execution method.

I spent 16 years in solitary in South Carolina. This is what it did to me. | Opinion

South Carolinian Randy Poindexter writes about the effects 16 years of solitary confinement had on him ahead of South Carolina’s planned execution of Mikal Mahdi , who spent months in solitary as a young man. For 16 years, I lived in a concrete cell. Twenty-three hours a day, every day, for more than 3,000 days, South Carolina kept me in solitary confinement. I was a young man before I was sent to solitary — angry, untreated and unwell. I made mistakes. But I wasn’t sentenced to madness. That’s what solitary did to me. My mental health worsened with each passing day. At first, paranoia and depression set in. Then, hallucinations and self-mutilation. I talked to people who weren’t there. I cut myself to feel something besides despair. I could do nothing as four of my friends and fellow prisoners took their own lives rather than endure another day of torturous isolation.

Florida executes Michael Tanzi

Florida on Tuesday executed a death row inmate described by one local detective as a "fledgling serial killer" for the murder of a beloved Miami Herald employee. Florida executed Michael Tanzi on Tuesday, 25 years after the murder of beloved Miami Herald employee Janet Acosta, who was attacked in broad daylight on her lunch break in 2000. Michael Tanzi, 48, was executed by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison in Raiford and pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. ET.

Singapore executes man for 2017 murder of pregnant wife and daughter

Teo Ghim Heng, who strangled his pregnant wife and four-year-old daughter in 2017 before burning their bodies, was executed on 16 April 2025 after exhausting all legal avenues. His clemency pleas were rejected and his conviction upheld by the Court of Appeal in 2022. Teo Ghim Heng, who was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and their four-year-old daughter in 2017, was executed on 16 April 2025. The Singapore Prison Service confirmed that Teo’s death sentence was carried out at Changi Prison Complex. In a news release on the same day, the police stated: “He was accorded full due process under the law, and was represented by legal counsel both at the trial and at the appeal. His petitions to the President for clemency were unsuccessful.”

Louisiana | Lawyers of Jessie Hoffman speak about their final moments before execution

As Louisiana prepared its first execution in 15 years, a team of lawyers from Loyola Law were working to save Jessie Hoffman’s life. “I was a young lawyer three years out of law school, and Jessie was almost finished with his appeals at that time, and my boss told me we needed to file something for Jessie because he’s in danger of being executed,” Kappel said. Kappel and her boss came up with a civil lawsuit to file that said since they wouldn’t give him a protocol for his execution, he was being deprived of due process, and the lawsuit was in the legal process for the next 10 years.

South Carolina | Man who ambushed off-duty cop to face firing squad in second execution of its kind

Mikal Mahdi, 48, who was found guilty of killing an off-duty police officer and a convenience store worker, is the second inmate scheduled to executed by South Carolina's new firing squad A murderer who ambushed and shot an off duty police officer eight times before burning his body in a killing spree is set to become the second person to die by firing squad. South Carolina's highest court has rejected the last major appeal from Mikal Mahdi, 41, who is to be put to death with three bullets to the heart at 6pm on April 11 at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia. Mahdi's lawyers said his original lawyers put on a shallow case trying to spare his life that didn't call on relatives, teachers or people who knew him and ignored the impact of weeks spent in solitary confinement in prison as a teen.

The Sordid, Unscientific Story Behind Lethal Injection

A new book by a national expert explores the failures of the United States’ favored execution method. Texas was the first U.S. state to execute someone by lethal injection, but the idea for the novel method came from Oklahoma. Our northern neighbor was the first to adopt the plan to replace the spectacle of the electric chair with something more palatable for witnesses and the public. Texas was just the first to test it out on a person. Since 1982, when state officials injected Charlie Brooks—convicted of murder in Fort Worth—with a lethal cocktail of drugs dreamt up by Oklahoma’s medical examiner but untested in any research setting, Texas has led the country in lethal injections. Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection (NYU Press, April 2025)—a new book by law professor, former prosecutor, and death penalty expert Corinna Barrett Lain—brings readers into the death chamber to bear disturbing witness to the reality of lethal injection.

Indiana Supreme Court sets May 20 execution date for death row inmate Benjamin Ritchie

The condemned man has exhausted his appeals but is likely to seek a clemency plea. Indiana Supreme Court justices on Tuesday set a May 20 execution date for death row inmate Benjamin Ritchie, who was convicted in 2002 for killing a law enforcement officer from Beech Grove. The high court’s decision followed a series of exhausted appeals previously filed by Ritchie and his legal team. The inmate’s request for post-conviction relief was denied in Tuesday’s 13-page order, penned by Chief Justice Loretta Rush, although she disagreed with the decision in her opinion.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog