Nitrogen hypoxia kills a person by replacing the oxygen they breathe with nitrogen gas. It is a method created to continue executions when states face difficulty obtaining lethal injection drugs. Human beings should not become test subjects for a new way of carrying out the death penalty. 

Alabama conducted the first nitrogen hypoxia execution in the United States in January 2024. Witnesses reported that Kenneth Smith shook and struggled against his restraints before he died. United Nations human rights experts subsequently condemned the execution and called for nitrogen gas executions to be stopped. Since then, the method has continued to spread rather than disappear. United Nations Human Rights Office. 

Nitrogen hypoxia is now legally authorized in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma. Alabama and Louisiana have already used it to carry out executions. 

This petition is not asking anyone to excuse violence, overlook the suffering of victims, or deny the need for accountability. People who commit serious crimes can be held accountable without the government deliberately taking another human life. 

Responding to killing with another killing does not restore the person who was lost. It does not undo the original harm. It teaches society that compassion has limits and that, under certain circumstances, deliberately ending a restrained person’s life is an acceptable answer. 

We can protect society, acknowledge the pain of victims and their families, and impose serious consequences without continuing an eye-for-an-eye cycle of death. 

A compassionate society is not measured by how kindly it treats only the innocent. It is measured by whether it refuses to abandon human dignity when doing so is most difficult. 

We call upon the governors and state legislatures of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma to immediately suspend all nitrogen hypoxia executions and remove nitrogen hypoxia from their authorized methods of execution. 

No state should strap a human being to a gurney, place a mask over their face, and force them to breathe gas until their body dies from a lack of oxygen. 

We must not allow this method to become normalized. Stop nitrogen hypoxia executions before more human beings are killed this way. 

Why I started this petition 

I am an author, journalist, and human rights advocate working toward the abolition of capital punishment. My opposition to nitrogen hypoxia is not something I arrived at casually. I have devoted my writing and advocacy to confronting what happens when a society allows punishment to overcome compassion. 

My illustrated dark fantasy book, When the Candle Went Out, was inspired by the use of nitrogen hypoxia and the human life hidden behind the clinical language of execution. Through fiction, I have tried to help readers look beyond labels, recognize the humanity of a condemned person, and consider what state-sanctioned killing asks all of us to accept. 

You can learn more about the book and the message behind it here: 

When the Candle Went Out⁠ 

This petition is the next step in that work. A book can encourage people to feel and reflect, but awareness must eventually become action. I am asking others to stand with me and say that oxygen deprivation must never become a normalized instrument of government punishment.