Why has America started to gas its convicts?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2024
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Alabama has executed convicted murderer Kenneth Eugene Smith with nitrogen gas, the first time this method of capital punishment has been used anywhere in the world.
On today's show Lewis asks how it has come to this, and whether the US government will be gassing more of its criminals
Later, we take a huge handbrake turn to talk to the creator of the year's biggest TV show and cultural phenomenon - The Traitors. He tells Lewis how they choose the Traitors and even hints at a celebrity version.
Editor: Tom Hughes
Senior Producer: Gabriel Radus
Producer: Laura FitzPatrick
Social Media Editor: Georgia Foxwell
Video Production: Shane Fennelly & Arvind Badewal
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a Global Player original podcast. |
| 0:05.0 | Smith was pronounced deceased by physicians at 8.25 p.m. Central Standard Time. |
| 0:13.0 | One, Smith was holding his breath as long as he could. |
| 0:16.0 | He struggled against his restraints a little bit, |
| 0:19.0 | but there's some involuntary movement and some agnol breathing. |
| 0:22.5 | So that was all expected and it's in the side effects that we've seen of research on nitrogen epoxy. |
| 0:30.6 | So nothing was out of the ordinary of what we were expecting. |
| 0:33.9 | It's nothing out of the ordinary. |
| 0:35.7 | That was Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm, addressing reporters on Friday morning. He couldn't have been more wrong. What he was talking about was unique. It couldn't have been less ordinary. At the Holman Correctional Facility in Altmore, Alabama, in the middle of the night before, 58-year-old Kenneth Eugene |
| 0:55.7 | Smith became the first person in the history of the United States to be executed using |
| 1:01.3 | nitrogen hypoxia. He was suffocated, gassed to death. It took him 22 minutes to die. He |
| 1:10.3 | held his breath. The story is gruesome enough. It gets even |
| 1:14.2 | weirder. Smith was executed by poison gas because lethal injection hadn't worked on him the first |
| 1:21.3 | time around. His case has attracted worldwide attention, the man they couldn't kill until they did. The United Nations has |
| 1:29.0 | condemned the United States for using a method of execution which is a potential form of torture |
| 1:34.4 | and degrading punishment. And here's the thing, why it really matters, beyond our grim fascination |
| 1:40.5 | with the gallows. We might be seeing more of this. On this episode, we take you through |
| 1:45.6 | how it can be why it is that the United States government may end up gassing more and more of its |
| 1:52.5 | own convicts who remain, whatever their crimes, their own citizens. It's Lewis here. Welcome to the |
| 1:59.6 | Newsagents. The's Lewis here. Welcome to the news agents. The news agents. An Alabama |
| 2:06.2 | inmate is dead and the country's first ever execution using nitrogen gas. America woke up to |
| 2:12.9 | the news that Kenneth Eugene Smith never would again. Overnight, he'd had his last meal, steak, hash browns and eggs, |
... |
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