HOUSTON: Alabama will execute a death row inmate using nitrogen gas on Thursday evening alongside a lethal injection in Texas.
Geoffrey West faces execution at 6:00 pm US Central Time for murdering gas station clerk Margaret Berry during a 1997 robbery.
The 50-year-old was convicted of killing Berry, a 33-year-old mother of two, in the town of Attalla.
Meanwhile, Texas plans to execute Blaine Milam by lethal injection at approximately the same time.
Milam received a death sentence for the 2008 murder of his girlfriend’s 13-month-old daughter Amora Carson.
Court documents describe how the child died during what was described as an exorcism.
Amora Carson was beaten, strangled, sexually mutilated, and had twenty-four human bite marks covering her entire body.
The medical examiner called it the worst case of brutality he had ever seen.
Milam’s lawyers attempted to halt the execution by arguing he is intellectually disabled.
Appeals courts rejected these efforts to stop the execution.
His case appeared in Werner Herzog’s 2013 documentary film called On Death Row.
The United States has carried out 31 executions this year, representing the highest number since 2014.
Thirty-five inmates were put to death in 2014, which remains the recent peak.
Florida leads all states with twelve executions conducted this year.
South Carolina and Texas follow with four executions each.
Lethal injection remains the most common method with twenty-six executions.
Two executions used a firing squad while three employed nitrogen hypoxia.
This nitrogen gas method involves pumping nitrogen into a face mask to suffocate the prisoner.
United Nations experts have denounced nitrogen gas executions as cruel and inhumane.
Twenty-three American states have abolished the death penalty entirely.
California, Oregon and Pennsylvania currently maintain moratoriums on executions.
President Donald Trump supports capital punishment and called for expanded use on his first day in office.
He advocated applying the death penalty for what he described as the vilest crimes.
Trump signed a memorandum directing federal prosecutors to seek capital punishment in Washington.
The order applies to appropriate cases in the nation’s capital. – AFP
