This talk draws upon the 2024 complaints filed in the United Nations of behalf of death row inmates in Alabama. It will reveal the curious British origin of the idea for nitrogen gas executions and details how some US states have now endorsed this method of execution. Alabama has implemented a nitrogen execution protocol, and has done so through imbedding inaccurate scientific opinions. The history of the death penalty reveals a certain resilience against rational arguments reflecting humanity and a humane world, and the story of how nitrogen has been used to kill death row inmates is no exception. Therefore, in this talk, a new methodology will be proposed for assessing how scientists contribute to the role of the state in developing capital punishment. Important illuminative methods and information are provided by scientists, but the dangers are recognised when there is a perceived omnicompetence over punishment processes which are then used to prevent transparency and thwart explanatory accurary. We can best guard against erroneous scientific opinion being used to harm people through inter-disciplinary dialogue, but for a meaningful conversation there needs to be a fair consideration of the viewpoints of the various stakeholders. The torture imposed upon death row inmates through lethal injection has now been replaced by the option of torture through being forced to breathe in nitrogen gas. This has emerged from the great pressure and the resultant errors that the death penalty creates within the criminal justice system. Nitrogen executions have revealed a further example of how states kill through implementing bias and negligence and helps to demonstrate why the death penalty should be abolished not just in the United States, but worldwide.

Jon Yorke is Professor of Human Rights and the Director of the BCU Centre for Human Rights at Birmingham City University. He is an expert on the death penalty and international law, with a focus on the UN's universal periodic review. He is a member of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office's Pro-Bono Lawyers Panel, in which he advises the British government on death penalty matters. He has advised the United Nations, the European Union, and the Council of Europe, on death penalty issues. On behalf of death row inmates in different jurisdictions he has filed amicus curiae briefs and authored complaints to various UN special procedure mechanisms. He is a founding member of the International Academic Network for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, a research fellow at the Death Penalty Research Unit, Oxford University, and he has published widely on death penalty and human rights issues.