16 February 2024
TOPEKA (KSNT) – Kansas lawmakers may soon have a difficult decision to make regarding the death penalty.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach is pushing for a bill that would see hypoxia added as an execution method. He says other states, like Alabama, have moved from lethal injection to hypoxia because the drugs needed for lethal injection are harder to come by.
He also says hypoxia is a more humane method, though some lawmakers disagree.
“It’s difficult, if not impossible to carry out a lethal injection execution, because of the circumstances I described,” Kobach said. “Alabama just happens to be the first of those three states that have already made the move to actually carry out an execution. But as I say other states are following the three that already have it, and it’s out of necessity.”
“This is not a humane way to execute a dog, let alone a human being,” Representative John Carmichael, (D) Wichita, said. “So, in my opinion, what the attorney general has proposed is more inhumane than the present lethal injection.”
The bill will be discussed by a committee of lawmakers before it can be voted on.