Alabama’s attorney general shares a grim prediction about executions with nitrogen gas

Shortly after Alabama carried out its historic and widely criticized decision to execute a prisoner using nitrogen gas, the state’s attorney general told residents to expect more such executions and encouraged other states to use the previously untested method.

Alabama executed Kenneth Smith, who was convicted of murder, on Thursday — and it was the second time the state had tried to execute him, after a failed attempt via lethal injection. The move came over the objection of multiple Supreme Court justices, the United Nations’ human rights chief and other groups.

At a news conference on Friday that sounded at times like a capital punishment pep rally, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall praised the prosecutors on Smith’s case, saying: “As the numbers prove, they’re the best team of capital litigators in the country, bar none, and I could not be prouder of the work they’ve done.”

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, only Florida, Georgia, Missouri and Texas have executed more prisoners over the past decade than Alabama — and Marshall said more such executions are in store. The attorney general also said 43 other death row inmates in Alabama have chosen to die by nitrogen gas.

“I think we will definitely have more nitrogen hypoxia executions in Alabama,” he said.

And Marshall offered a message of encouragement to his counterparts in other states: “Alabama has done it, and now so can you. We stand ready to assist you in implementing this method in your states.”

That same day, officials from the European Union and the United Nations rebuked Alabama over Smith’s execution. But all things considered, it doesn’t seem like the backlash is going to stop Alabama — or, potentially, other states — from moving forward with executions using nitrogen asphyxiation. And that’s a problem at home and abroad.

The E.U. and U.N. statements leave no question: America’s moral authority is diminished when we engage in behavior widely seen as cruel and unusual. And hemorrhaging moral authority makes it difficult to demand that other countries treat their citizens justly.