Sept. 25 (UPI) — The United States has two executions scheduled for Thursday — one in Alabama and the other in Texas — during a year that has seen an uptick in inmates being put to death.
Geoffrey Todd West, 50, is to die by nitrogen hypoxia at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, located near the Alabama border along the Florida panhandle for the 1997 murder of 33-year-old Margaret Parrish Berry.
Nitrogen hypoxia is a method of execution that deprives the brain of oxygen by forcing inmates to breathe only nitrogen.
Only six people have been executed by this method since Alabama killed Kenneth Eugene Smith with nitrogen gas in January of last year. Louisiana is the only other U.S. state that has actually used this method of execution…