Oklahoma is developing a protocol for the state’s new primary method of execution: inert gas inhalation.
Officials announced Wednesday it will replace lethal injection as Oklahoma's primary way to carry out capital punishment. Corrections Director Joe Allbaugh was put in charge of the state's prisons in January 2016, a year after Oklahoma's last execution, one in which the state used the wrong drug on Charles Warner.
"Ever since that date, I have been in the mad hunt for drugs to perform lethal injection executions in Oklahoma," Allbaugh said. "I got to the point in finding these drugs that I was calling all around the world to the back streets of the Indian subcontinent."
Since 2015, state law has allowed for execution by nitrogen hypoxia if lethal injection is unavailable.
"Argon, helium, nitrogen, they’re all inert gases. I think the reason that nitrogen was suggested in the statute is when you buy gas in the industrial world, that’s the cheapest gas available," Allbaugh said.
It will take three to four months to develop a protocol for administering the gas, which will likely be nitrogen pumped through a mask. Oklahoma could become the first state to use nitrogen gas in executions. While it hasn’t been tested for capital punishment, Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter is convinced nitrogen will work.
"It is the — a common procedure in states and in countries that allow for assisted suicide," Hunter said.
People breathing excessive amounts of inert gas may experience fatigue, dizziness, headache and euphoria.
Once the protocol is developed, the state must resolve a federal stay on executions before putting it into practice, which could take another five months or more. That puts Oklahoma's first executions by inert gas inhalation at least eight months away.
