Alabama has carried out the first execution of a death row inmate in the US using nitrogen gas, an untested procedure which the prisoner’s lawyers had argued amounted to a form of cruel and unusual punishment banned under the US constitution.
Kenneth Smith, 58, was pronounced dead at 8.25pm on Thursday evening at an Alabama prison after breathing pure nitrogen gas through a face mask to cause oxygen deprivation.
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The technique, known as “nitrogen hypoxia”, leads to fatal oxygen deprivation.
Guardian
Yikes.
Alabama claimed that the new nitrogen gas method was “perhaps the most humane method of execution ever devised”. But eyewitness statements from reporters present in the death chamber suggested that Smith’s death was anything but humane.
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The execution took about 22 minutes.
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Marty Roney of the Montgomery Advertiser reported that between 7.57pm local time and 8.01pm “Smith writhed and convulsed on the gurney. He took deep breaths, his body shaking violently with his eyes rolling in the back of his head.”
Roney’s report continued: “Smith clenched his fists, his legs shook … He seemed to be gasping for air. The gurney shook several times.”
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The execution took about 22 minutes. Smith appeared to remain conscious for several of those minutes, at times appearing to shake and writhe on the gurney and pull against his restraints. This was followed by several minutes of heavy breathing, until his breathing was no longer perceptible.
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The Rev Jeff Hood, Smith’s spiritual adviser, was at Smith’s side for the execution, and said prison officials in the room “were visibly surprised at how bad this thing went”.
And why didn't they stop it?
The execution had been scheduled to begin at 6pm local time at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, but it was delayed as the US supreme court weighed his final appeal. Shortly before 8pm, the court denied that appeal, allowing the execution to proceed.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who along with two other liberal justices dissented, wrote: “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.”
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The prisoner also unsuccessfully argued that he was being dealt with doubly unlawfully by dint of him having been subjected to an execution procedure once before. In November 2022, the state strapped him for four hours to the gurney and punctured his arms and legs in a failed attempt to find a vein through which to kill him using lethal medications.
Jesus.
In the run-up to the execution, Alabama had come under a raft of domestic and international criticism. Hundreds of Jewish clergy and community leaders across the US signed a letter organised by L’chaim!, Jews Against the Death Penalty, calling for a halt.
“Just the idea of using gas for executions is an affront to our community,” the co-founder of L’chaim, Mike Zoosman, said. “The Nazi legacy of experimentation to find the most expeditious way to rid our community of undesirable prisoners is an undercurrent for anyone who is aware of that history that should not be repeated in Alabama, or anywhere.”
Smith’s pending death was also denounced by UN experts on arbitrary executions and torture who fiercely opposed the use of what they decried as a human experiment.
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Smith was convicted of the 1988 murder-for-hire of a pastor’s wife, Elizabeth Sennett. He and another man were each allegedly paid $1,000 to kill her by Charles Sennett, a minister in the Church of Christ who went on to take his own life after suspicion fell on him.
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