Revisionist History · Pushkin Industries

The Alabama Murders - Part 7: The Second Warrant

November 6, 2025·40 min·3 clips

Alabama's execution team admitted they never consulted medical personnel about the risk of vomiting during nitrogen gas execution.

No IV this time. The courtroom excerpt follows Alabama's revised execution plan for Kenny Smith, where almost everything stays in place except the method. The mask is the change that matters. Instead of intravenous access, the state plans to use a mask connected to a canister of pure nitrogen. Then the transcript does the work. Andrew Burns Johnson questions a Department of Corrections witness about what would happen if Smith vomited inside the mask. The answers are thin. The witness says staff had conversations, pictured hypotheticals, and came up with ideas about possible side effects. Then the sharper point lands. Vomiting in a mask could cause asphyxiation, and the witness acknowledges that risk under questioning. The quoted answers do not show medical consultation. The Department of Corrections witness says medical personnel were not involved in developing the protocol he signed. The host sits with that, imagining the lawyer's bafflement and disbelief. The budget makes it harder to shrug off. He asks whether an agency with more than $700 million could really be improvising something this serious. Zurich becomes the contrast. A research team there had gone to enormous effort to decide whether nitrogen was fit for lab rats. Alabama comes off very differently. In the courtroom excerpt, the state has a protocol and a mask, but not the medical consultation the questions keep pointing toward. The scene turns procedural uncertainty into moral evidence. What starts as technical questioning becomes an argument about how a government can make death look orderly while basic dangers remain unresolved.

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