LINCOLN- A proposal to use nitrogen gas to carry out executions in Nebraska drew a slew of opponents of capital punishment to the Nebraska Legislature's Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. Opponents of the proposal, from the ACLU of Nebraska to the Nebraska Nurses Association, called using suffocation via nitrogen gas "untested, dangerous and explicitly inhumane."

State Sen. Loren Lippincott, who introduced LB970, argued that, because of the refusal of pharmaceutical companies to provide the drugs used in lethal injection executions, Nebraska must find another method. Obtaining nitrogen gas, said Lippincott, would not be a difficult endeavor. The senator compared it to "putting to sleep" a sickly pet.

However, Sens. Carol Blood and Terrell McKinney argued that the process, used first in Alabama earlier this year, is far from painless. Blood said that witnesses to Alabama's first use of nitrogen gas as an execution tool reported that the condemned inmate "gasped for air" as his body shook and his fists clenched together for 22 minutes before he was pronounced dead.

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