A murderer who killed a preacher’s wife in 1988 is said to be the first death row inmate in America to be executed with nitrogen.
Alabama officials want to have 58-year-old Kenneth Eugene Smith killed by nitrogen hypoxia — forcing him to breathe only nitrogen, depriving them of oxygen and allowing them to die.
Several states have approved the supposedly painless method, but it has never been used.
Critics said authorities were “experimenting with a method never before used” – but even Smith said he would prefer death by nitrogen to lethal injection.
The Alabama Attorney General on Friday asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date for Smith. Court records revealed that Alabama plans to kill him via nitrogen hypoxia.
This undated photo from the Alabama Department of Corrections shows inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith, convicted of the 1988 contract killing of a preacher’s wife. Smith, 57, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection Thursday in a southern Alabama jail
The Alabama Attorney General on Friday asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date for Smith. Court records revealed that Alabama plans to kill him via nitrogen hypoxia. This October 7, 2002 file photo shows Alabama’s lethal injection chamber at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore
Smith was one of two men who each paid $1,000 to murder Elizabeth Sennett on behalf of her preacher husband Charles Sennett Sr., who was in debt and collecting life insurance money.
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Nitrogen makes up 78% of the air we breathe and is harmless when inhaled with oxygen. Proponents of the new method have theorized that it is painless.
Alabama approved the method in 2018 due to a shortage of drugs to carry out lethal injections, but the state has not yet attempted to use it to carry out a death sentence.
Oklahoma and Mississippi have also permitted nitrogen hypoxia but have not used it.
The disclosure that Alabama is willing to use nitrogen hypoxia is expected to spark a new round of legal battles over the method’s constitutionality.
Smith was one of two men who each paid $1,000 to murder Elizabeth Sennett on behalf of her preacher husband Charles Sennett Sr., who was in debt and collecting life insurance money.
John Forrest Parker, the other murder convict, was executed in 2010.
Charles Sennett, the victim’s husband and a Church of Christ minister, killed himself when investigations focused on him as a possible suspect, according to court documents.
Smith, 57, was scheduled to receive a lethal injection at a southern Alabama jail in November, but officers were unable to properly perform the procedure.
The Equal Justice Initiative, a legal advocacy group that deals with capital punishment issues, said Alabama has a history of “failed and erroneous executions and attempted executions” and that “experimenting a method never used before is a terrible idea.”
“No state in the country has executed an individual for using nitrogen hypoxia, and Alabama has no capacity to experiment with a totally unproven and underutilized method of executing an individual,” said Angie Setzer, a senior counsel for the Equal Justice Initiative.
John Forrest Parker, the other man convicted of the killing, was executed in 2010
Prosecutors said Smith and John Forrest Parker were each paid $1,000 to kill Elizabeth Sennett for her husband, Charles Sennett Sr., who was heavily in debt and trying to collect insurance
Sennett’s husband, who was a pastor of the Westside Church of Christ in Sheffield, killed himself a week after her death as the murder investigation focused on him as a suspect, according to court documents
Alabama tried to execute Smith by lethal injection last year but called off the execution because of problems getting an IV in his veins. It was the second such case in two months in which the state was unable to kill a detainee, and the third since 2018.
The day after Smith’s aborted execution, Gov. Kay Ivey announced a pause in executions to conduct an internal review of lethal injection procedures. The state resumed the use of lethal injections last month.
“It is a tragedy that Kenneth Smith escaped the death penalty for nearly 35 years after being convicted of the heinous contract killings of an innocent woman, Elizabeth Sennett,” Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement on Friday.
Alabama has been working on developing the nitrogen hypoxia execution method for several years, but has revealed little about its plans.
No details of how the execution was carried out were described in the Attorney General’s court filings. Correctional Commissioner John Hamm told reporters last month that a transcript was almost complete.
A number of Alabama inmates who wanted to avoid being executed by lethal injection, including Smith, have argued that they should be allowed to die by nitrogen hypoxia.
Robert Grass, an attorney representing Smith, declined to comment Friday.
Sennett was found dead on March 18, 1988 in the home she shared with her husband on Coon Dog Cemetery Road in Colbert County, Alabama.
The murder and revelations about who was behind it shook the small community in northern Alabama.