Alabama plans to experiment with nitrogen hypoxia, a previously untried method of execution, when it puts Kenneth Smith to death on Jan. 25. Experience has shown that when it comes to the death penalty, such experiments often go awry and produce disastrous consequences. Alabama’s scheduled execution of Smith may offer yet another tragic example of what happens when states trot out such methods. Yet, last week District Judge R. Austin Huffaker chose to disregard that risk and give Alabama the go-ahead.

Huffaker ignored the lessons of history and illustrated the Kafkaesque complexities and inhumanity of the law now governing the choice of execution methods.

Before looking closely at Huffaker’s disturbing opinion, it’s worth looking at other instances in which states have first tried new ways of putting people to death. Let’s start with New York’s late-19th-century decision to replace hanging with the electric chair.

It did so after a long period of studying different methods of execution and after being assured by experts that electrocuting someone would be a painless and humane way of carrying out a death sentence. After all that, on Aug. 6, 1890, its first use of the electric chair, in the execution of William Kemmler, went disastrously wrong.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, in the run-up to his execution, Kemmler pleaded with corrections officers: “Don’t let them experiment on me more than they ought to.” But despite his pleas, the experiment went on.

The results, the center reports, were disastrous:

After an initial 17-second administration of high-voltage electric current, a doctor declared Kemmler dead. Then Kemmler let out a deep groan. … Reports of the execution say that “After 2 minutes the execution chamber filled with the smell of burning flesh. 2 of the witnesses fainted. Several others were overcome with severe attacks of nausea.” …Newspapers called the execution a “historic bungle” and “disgusting, sickening and inhuman.”

Fast-forward three decades to 1924, the first time the gas........

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