Alabama executes prisoner with unprecedented method: nitrogen gas

The state of Alabama (southern United States) executed prisoner Kenneth Eugene Smith this Thursday by asphyxiating him with nitrogen gas, a method never before tried, according to authorities.

Smith, sentenced to death for murdering a woman for hire in 1988, was pronounced dead at 8:25 p.m. local time (02:25 GMT on Friday) after inhaling nitrogen gas through a mask and running out of oxygen.

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His last words, already with the mask on, were: “Tonight Alabama makes humanity take a step back. Thanks for your support. I love you all”.

Journalists who were eyewitnesses to the execution reported that after the gas began to flow, Smith writhed for a couple of minutes and then was seen breathing heavily for several more minutes.

The director of the Alabama Department of Corrections, John Hamm, said in a subsequent press conference that the inmate’s shaking was “involuntary,” but nothing out of the ordinary.

The nitrogen gas flowed for about 15 minutes.

The state of Alabama executed a convicted murderer this Thursday by asphyxiation with pure nitrogen, an unprecedented method that once again placed the United States at the center of the debate over capital punishment.

Kenneth Eugene Smith, convicted of committing murder for hire in…

— RT in Spanish (@ActualidadRT) January 26, 2024

Attempt to stop execution in Alabama

The Supreme Court of the United States rejected minutes before the execution the last appeal that the prisoner’s defense had presented this Thursday by 6 votes to 3, thus giving the green light to the start of the procedure.

Progressive Sonia Sotomayor, one of the three judges who voted to stop the execution, argued that “Having failed to kill Smith on its first attempt, Alabama has chosen him as its ‘guinea pig’ to test a method of execution never before used.”

Alabama already attempted to execute Smith in November 2022, but the executioner was unable to insert intravenous lines. As part of a later agreement, Alabama agreed not to try to kill him again with lethal injection.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch or the Community of San Egidio had asked the United States in recent days not to allow the execution.

For a thousand dollars

Smith was on death row for having murdered a woman, Elizabeth Sennett, in 1988, at the request of her husband, Charles Sennett, who intended to collect compensation. Smith and an accomplice, John Forrest Parker, received $1,000 each.

Sennett committed suicide a week after the murder, when he realized that authorities considered him a suspect, while Parker was also sentenced to death and executed in 2010 by lethal injection.

“We have forgiven the three people involved years ago,” Mike Sennett also stated at a press conference with his two brothers, the children of the murdered woman, after witnessing the execution of the last of those involved, a sensation that they described as “bittersweet”.

“Evil acts have consequences.” they added.

All eyes were on Alabama and its new method of execution, the first developed since lethal injection was introduced in 1982, the majority during the last four decades in the country, replacing the electric chair.

Nitrogen gas asphyxiation

Alabama decided to try asphyxiation with nitrogen gas due to the difficulty that states that still use capital punishment to acquire lethal drugs have faced in recent years due to the refusal of pharmaceutical companies to allow them to be used for this purpose.

In addition, complications that have arisen in several executions since 2014 – some in Alabama – have led to the method being questioned as inhumane and the subject of legal disputes for years.

Other states were very awaiting the execution in Alabama, to also introduce the nitrogen asphyxiation method. Oklahoma and Mississippi, in fact, have already approved the method, but have not yet developed a protocol for using it or built the facilities.

Since the Supreme Court reintroduced the death penalty in 1976, 1,583 prisoners have been executed in the United States, 73 of them in Alabama.