The second time around, Alabama achieved its goal of killing Kenneth Eugene Smith. Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, confirmed that the state had executed the inmate using an experimental method: nitrogen asphyxiation. Smith, who was pronounced dead at 8:25 p.m., was sentenced to death in the late 1980s for the contract killing of a preacher's wife.
It was a test run that was successful within a few minutes. The southern state tested the nitrogen hypoxia technique, criticized as “inhumane” by anti-death activists and the United Nations, on a prisoner who had already been sent to the execution chamber to receive a lethal injection in 2022. However, the executioners were unable to find the right vein in time before the death sentence expired; After being tied to a stretcher for four hours, he was sent back to his cell.
Witnesses to the execution described “two to four minutes of convulsions” and “five minutes of heavy breathing” and said Smith made a final statement: “Tonight, Alabama made humanity take a step back. “I leave with love, peace and light. Thank you for supporting me, I love you all.” As the gas began to flow, he looked at his wife and added, “I love you.”
The governor's office released a statement saying, “After more than 30 years and one attempt after another to game the system, Mr. Smith has answered for his terrible crimes.” Before the execution, the state had claimed nitrogen hypoxia is “the most painless and humane method of execution known to man.”
On Thursday, shortly before 7 p.m., the Supreme Court confirmed a ruling from the previous day rejecting the stay of execution. Witnesses, including five journalists who were allowed to attend the execution, the condemned man's attorneys, Smith's wife and the children of the murderer and the victim, boarded a van to the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore to witness the execution. Prison workers attached a standard industrial safety respirator to her face and left the room. Smith was left alone with his spiritual advisor, Reverend Jeff Hood.
Smith spent his final moments saying goodbye to his wife and family members and ordering one final lunch: steak, hash browns and eggs topped with gravy, ordered from the fast-food chain Waffle House. Meanwhile, his lawyers asked the Supreme Court to stop the execution in extreme cases. The defense's argument was based on doubts about the procedure, although it was Smith himself who chose hypoxia when given the choice after the failure of the previous attempt at lethal injection. Doctors, anti-death penalty activists and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights shared concerns that death would be slow and painful, that inhaling the gas would cause vomiting and that the prisoner would suffocate. The gas would not do its job and the prisoner would suffocate would be left in a vegetative state, or there would be a deadly gas leak that would endanger Reverend Hood's life.
Demonstration last Tuesday in front of the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama to demand that Gov. Kay Ivey stops Smith's execution. Center, from left, three exonerated death row inmates, Randall Padgent, Gary Drinkard and Ron Wright.Mickey Welsh (AP)
“Mr. “Smith was selected for execution despite his failure to fully satisfy the claims raised in a separate proceeding from that failed attempt, which represents a departure from state practice and treats Mr. Smith differently than other similarly situated inmates “,” the filing said. “And the state continues to do so despite mounting evidence of Mr. Smith's escalating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, which pose a significant risk that he will vomit and suffocate during the execution, which.” results in continued or additional pain and suffering.”
“Grasping at straws”
The Alabama attorney general's office rejected those efforts, saying Smith was “grasping at straws.” “The district court found (twice) that Smith's fear was 'speculative,' 'theoretical,' and 'improbable,'” the response states. And the 11th Circuit agreed: “There is no evidence that Smith is likely to vomit at the moment nitrogen is introduced into the mask.”
The protocol approved by Alabama promised this after the introduction of nitrogen gas [into the inmate’s body], it is administered for 15 minutes or five minutes after the ECG shows a flat line. Whichever comes first.
Smith, 58, was convicted of participating in the contract killing of Elizabeth Sennett in 1989 along with another man named John Forrest Parker. The couple stabbed her and beat her to death with a fireplace poker in return for a $1,000 payment promised to them by the victim's husband, an adulterous preacher who later called the police and tried to paint the plot as violent Raid on the victim's family home. When he was cornered, he committed suicide. Alabama killed Parker with a lethal injection in June 2010. A third person involved in the murder, Billy Gray Williams, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and died behind bars in 2020.
The use of nitrogen hypoxia stems from difficulties in recent years with lethal injection, a method introduced in Texas in 1982 and used to kill 1,377 convicts over the past 42 years.
The search for alternatives has recently intensified as pharmaceutical companies, for image reasons, refuse to sell these drugs to states whose stocks have already expired. Additionally, in 2011, the European Union banned the export of these drugs to the United States. This is one of the reasons why only five states carried out the death penalty in 2023. Smith was the third consecutive prisoner sent to Alabama to die, only to be returned to his cell when the vein could not be found.
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