The governor of the US state of Alabama Kay Ivey says prison officials have put to death Eugene Kenneth Smith, a convicted murderer, completing the first execution using asphyxiation by nitrogen gas.
Key points:
- Kenneth Smith was put to death on Thursday evening (local time) after the US Supreme Court declined to stop his execution
- His lawyers had previously said the new method was risky and could lead to torturous death or non-fatal injury
- Smith had survived a botched lethal injection in 2022, prompting a review of Alabama’s death penalty procedures
Smith, 58, was pronounced dead at 8:25pm at an Alabama prison after breathing pure nitrogen gas through a face mask to cause oxygen deprivation.
Alabama is advancing the method as a simpler alternative to lethal injections, calling it “the most painless and humane method of execution known to man”, but critics say it is cruel and experimental.
The US Supreme Court had earlier declined to stop the state from proceeding with the execution of Smith, who survived a botched lethal injection in 2022 that prompted a review of Alabama’s death penalty procedures.
United Nations human rights experts and lawyers for Smith had sought to prevent the execution, saying the method was risky and could lead to a torturous death or non-fatal injury.
The execution of Smith marked the first time a new method has been used for the death penalty in the United States since lethal injection, now the most commonly used method, was introduced in 1982.
Last-minute legal battle
The execution came after a last-minute legal battle in which Smith’s lawyers contended the state was making him the test subject for an experimental execution method that could violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Federal courts rejected Smith’s bid to block it, with the latest ruling coming on Thursday night from the US Supreme Court.
“Having failed to kill Smith on its first attempt, Alabama has selected him as its ‘guinea pig’ to test a method of execution never attempted before. The world is watching,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who dissented along with two other liberal justices.
The majority justices did not issue any statements.
In a statement issued before he was put to death, Smith and the Reverend Jeff Hood, his spiritual adviser, said, “The eyes of the world are on this impending moral apocalypse. Our prayer is that people will not turn their heads. We simply cannot normalise the suffocation of each other.”
The state had predicted the nitrogen gas would cause unconsciousness within seconds and death within minutes.
A state lawyer told the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that it would be “the most painless and humane method of execution known to man”.
But some doctors and organisations have raised alarm, and Smith’s lawyers had asked the Supreme Court to halt the execution to review claims that the method violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment and deserves more legal scrutiny before it is used on a person.
“There is little research regarding death by nitrogen hypoxia. When the State is considering using a novel form of execution that has never been attempted anywhere, the public has an interest in ensuring the State has researched the method adequately and established procedures to minimise the pain and suffering of the condemned person,” Smith’s lawyers wrote.
In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote that Alabama has shrouded its execution protocol in secrecy, releasing only a heavily redacted version.
She also said Smith should be allowed to obtain evidence about the execution protocol and to proceed with his legal challenge.
“That information is important not only to Smith, who has an extra reason to fear the gurney, but to anyone the State seeks to execute after him using this novel method,” Justice Sotomayor wrote.
“Twice now this Court has ignored Smith’s warning that Alabama will subject him to an unconstitutional risk of pain,” Justice Sotomayor wrote.
“I sincerely hope that he is not proven correct a second time.”
Justice Elena Kagan wrote a separate dissent and was joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
In his final hours, Smith met with family members and his spiritual adviser, according to a prison spokesperson.
He ate a last meal of T-bone steak, hash browns, toast and eggs slathered in A1 steak sauce, Reverend Hood said by telephone.
“He’s terrified at the torture that could come. But he’s also at peace. One of the things he told me is he is finally getting out,” Reverend Hood said.
Convicted for a 1988 murder-for-hire
Smith was one of two men convicted in the 1988 murder-for-hire slaying of Elizabeth Sennett.
Prosecutors said he and the other man were each paid $US1,000 ($1,517) to kill Ms Sennett on behalf of her pastor husband, who was deeply in debt and wanted to collect on insurance.
The victim’s son, Charles Sennett Jr., said in an interview with Alabama TV station WAAY-TV that Smith “has to pay for what he’s done”.
“And some of these people out there say, ‘Well, he doesn’t need to suffer like that.’ Well, he didn’t ask Mama how to suffer?” the son said.
“They just did it. They stabbed her — multiple times.”
Ms Sennett, 45, was found dead on March 18, 1988, in her home with eight stab wounds in the chest and one on each side of her neck, according to the coroner.
Her husband, Charles Sennett Sr., killed himself when the investigation focused on him as a suspect, according to court documents.
John Forrest Parker, the other man convicted in the slaying, was executed in 2010.
Smith’s 1989 conviction was overturned, but he was convicted again in 1996.
The jury recommended a life sentence by 11-1, but a judge overrode that and sentenced him to death.
Alabama no longer allows a judge to override a jury’s death penalty decision.
Appeals to stop ‘barbarous’ execution
The execution protocol called for Smith to be strapped to a gurney in the execution chamber — the same one where he was strapped down for several hours during the lethal injection attempt — and a “full face piece supplied air respirator” to be placed over his face.
After he would be given a chance to make a final statement, the warden, from another room, would activate the nitrogen gas.
It would be administered through the mask for at least 15 minutes or “five minutes following a flatline indication on the EKG, whichever is longer,” according to the state protocol.
Sant’Egidio Community, a Vatican-affiliated Catholic charity based in Rome, had urged Alabama not to go through with the execution, saying the method is “barbarous” and “uncivilised” and would bring “indelible shame” to the state.
Experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council cautioned they believe the execution method could violate the prohibition on torture.
Some states are looking for new ways to execute people because the drugs used in lethal injections have become difficult to find.
Three US states — Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma — have authorised nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method, but no state has attempted to use the untested method until now.
Smith’s lawyers had raised concerns that he could choke to death on his own vomit as the nitrogen gas flows.
The state made a last-minute procedural change so he would not be allowed food in the eight hours leading up to the execution.
Reuters/AP
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