The Interim Legal Director of the ACLU of Alabama Alison Mollman today testified before the Alabama State Legislature’s Joint Prison Oversight Committee. She advised lawmakers against using nitrogen hypoxia for executions citing examples from Georgia and elsewhere where workers have died from exposure to the odorless gas. This is especially important as the execution of Kenneth Smith via nitrogen hypoxia nears. Her full remarks are below:
“Good afternoon, my name is Alison Mollman and I am the Interim Legal Director at the ACLU of Alabama. Our organization has historically spoken on behalf of incarcerated people, but as this Committee is well aware, prison safety is also about workplace safety. I stand before this Committee today because the Department of Corrections’ plans to use nitrogen at an execution scheduled for January 25th is a lethal threat to the staff at Holman and the public, and must be stopped.
In January 2021, a leak allowed nitrogen gas to fill a freezer room at a poultry plant in Gainesville, Georgia. The first three workers who entered the freezer room immediately fell to the ground and died at the scene. Additional workers entered the freezer room and two more workers immediately fell to the ground and died at the scene. A sixth worker was pronounced dead at the hospital. And after 130 workers had to be evacuated, an additional 13 people, including four first responders in safety gear, required hospitalization and intensive care.
The tragedy in Georgia is no outlier. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board has cited an average of 8 deaths and 5 injuries every year from nitrogen exposure. And what all of these workplaces had by way of oversight from OSHA and other regulatory agencies, the Alabama Department of Corrections has none. In fact, there is no regulatory agency overseeing Alabama’s storage and use of nitrogen at Holman.
History, science, and common sense tell us that storing and using nitrogen at Holman is a ticking time bomb. The question isn’t if nitrogen gas will kill ADOC staff; the question is when.
The use of nitrogen hypoxia is lethal, wrong, and dangerous to your staff and the Alabamians you are responsible for. We still have time to prevent a tragedy and, that is why today, we are urging our state leaders to do everything in their power to keep people at Holman safe."
