On January 25, the state of Alabama will attempt to execute Kenneth Smith using nitrogen hypoxia, forcing him to inhale pure nitrogen through a mask until he suffocates. This will be the first time in United States history that nitrogen gas has ever been used to execute a person.

Earlier this month, United Nations human rights experts warned that the untested execution method might result in a painful and humiliating death. Moreover, it is likely to constitute torture, violating international human rights treaties ratified by the U.S. Last week, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, urged Alabama state authorities to cancel the execution.

Veterinary scientists, who have carried out laboratory studies on animals, have even largely ruled nitrogen gas out as a euthanasia method due to ethical concerns. Authorities in the U.S. and Europe have issued guidelines discouraging its use for most mammals, citing potential distress, panic, and seizure-like behavior.

Mr. Smith shouldn’t even be on death row. In 1996, a jury of his peers voted 11-1 for life in prison for his role in a 1988 killing. However, the sentencing judge imposed the death penalty anyway. If Mr. Smith were tried today, that could not happen, as Alabama no longer permits a judge to override a jury’s decision to sentence someone to life without parole.

If the state proceeds, it will be Alabama’s second attempt to execute Mr. Smith. In 2022, the Alabama Department of Corrections failed to find a suitable vein during a lethal injection attempt, calling it off after hours of needle insertions.

Attempting to kill Mr. Smith, or any other person, by nitrogen gas is cruel and inhumane. Plans to do so should be abandoned for those reasons alone – but there are others. Nitrogen gas presents a grave danger to prison staff, incarcerated people, and the public. The Alabama Department of Corrections is aware of the risks, evident in requiring Mr. Smith’s spiritual adviser to sign a waiver acknowledging he could be at risk of gas exposure if he chooses to be with Mr. Smith at the execution.

A recent tragedy at a Gainesville, Georgia poultry plant underscores the dangers of nitrogen gas. Following a leak that filled a freezer room, five workers entering it collapsed and died. A sixth worker was pronounced dead at the hospital. After evacuating 130 workers, an additional 13 people, including four first responders in safety gear, required hospitalization and intensive care.

The tragedy in Georgia is no outlier. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board reports an annual average of 8 deaths and 5 injuries from nitrogen exposure. History, science, and common sense tell us that storing and using nitrogen in Alabama prisons, or elsewhere, is a ticking time bomb. The question isn’t whether nitrogen gas will kill staff and incarcerated people; the question is when.

Governor Kay Ivey has the authority to stop Mr. Smith’s execution by nitrogen gas; or any other method proposed. And she must exercise that power.

But, we must also abolish the death penalty in Alabama and in the U.S. entirely. The justifications for ending it go beyond the cruel, dangerous, and tortuous methods employed. It’s a barbaric practice that too often condemns wrongly-convicted individuals to die and disproportionately kills people of color, people with low-income, people with intellectual disability, people living with mental illness, and others who are over-targeted for arrest and incarceration.

The U.S. must stop inventing new and more heinous methods of execution, and put an end to it once and for all.

When Manhattan resident Daudi Justin was studying for his undergraduate degree at Columbia University in 2016, he received a jury summons. He was astonished to learn that he was permanently disqualified from serving on a jury because of a past felony conviction. Justin had been arrested for drug possession nearly a decade earlier, an experience in part that prompted him to pursue a law degree to fight for prisoners’ rights. Now a staff attorney with the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, he represents clients in the same courts that bar him from sitting on juries.

Justin is co-lead plaintiff in a first-of-its-kind class-action lawsuit, Justin v. Tingling, filed in federal district court in Manhattan in December 2022 by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU). The case challenges the permanent exclusion of people with felony convictions from serving on juries. Decades of racialized policing and prosecution targeting Black residents have resulted in the mass disenfranchisement of Black people in Manhattan from the jury pool. A jury ban mocks the very idea of the equal administration of justice and the guarantee of an impartial jury.

“People [on juries] interpret things differently and may not understand the context of certain evidence that’s produced,” says Justin. “That’s why it’s harmful not having that diversity of perspective in the jury pool. We lose out on justice.”

Taking an approach that has proven effective in voter discrimination cases, the NYCLU is using statistical patterns of gross racial discrimination to argue against the jury ban in New York County. A favorable ruling could provide a legal blueprint for challenging similar criminal-record-based disqualifications state and nationwide. Manhattan has the worst disparities in arrest and conviction rates between Black people and white people of any county in the state. Approximately 25 percent of Manhattan’s otherwise eligible Black residents — a staggering 38,000 people — have been disqualified from jury service. Justin’s 2009 conviction came in the midst of a 20-year period during which Black people in Manhattan were convicted of felonies at a rate more than 21 times greater than white people. And the crime of which he was convicted — a remnant of the racist Rockefeller Drug Laws, which provided harsh sentences for drug offenses — is now classified as a misdemeanor.

The NYCLU also continues to advocate for the passage of the Jury of Our Peers Act, which would repeal New York’s lifetime categorical ban on jury service by people with past felony convictions. The bill, which will begin the 2024 legislative session on the chamber floor, moved through Assembly committees last year. In partnership with Assemblymember Jeffrion Aubry, the NYCLU has garnered support for this critical bill among advocacy groups and recruited co-sponsors.

Jury service is a fundamental right. It holds law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges accountable in a criminal legal system that is inherently biased.

“If more individuals who feel a certain way about the system are on the jury, they have the power to determine the cases,” says Justin. “So not only is jury duty participating in the democratic process, it’s also a way of exercising your political power.”

This article originally appeared in the ACLU magazine. Join us today to receive the next issue. The article has been updated to include current legislative advocacy efforts.