The all-Republican Supreme Court, by a vote of six to two, granted a request by state Attorney General Steve Marshall to allow this form of execution. The date of execution of the sentence has not yet been determined, reports “Fox News”.
“Elizabeth Sennett’s family waited an inordinate amount of time – 35 years – for justice to be served. Today, the Alabama Supreme Court cleared the way for Kenneth Eugene Smith to be executed by nitrogen,” the Attorney General said.
Smith himself expressed disappointment with the court’s decision, but his lawyers had urged the court to reject the request, arguing that the state was trying to make Smith a guinea pig. This form of capital punishment also exists in Oklahoma and Mississippi, but has never been used.
The new method assumes that the convict will breathe pure nitrogen, so the lack of oxygen will cause him to suffocate. Air is 78 percent nitrogen and is harmless when inhaled with oxygen.
Smith was convicted of the contract killing of Reverend Charles Sennett’s wife, Elizabeth, on March 18, 1988. The indictment alleged that Smith and another man each received $1,000 from the pastor, who was deeply in debt and wanted his wife’s life insurance money. The pastor himself committed suicide a week after his wife’s death, as soon as he became a suspect in the investigation. The second killer, John Forrest Parker, was executed in 2010.
While proponents of the new method claim it will be painless, critics liken it to human experimentation. In Alabama, this method was allowed in 2018 due to a lack of lethal injection ingredients, but has not been used until now.
Smith was due to die by lethal injection in 2022, but prison officials were unable to insert a needle into his vein. It was the second botched execution in Alabama in two months and the third since 2018. Then Governor Kay Ivey ordered a stay of executions and a review of the lethal injection procedure.
2023-11-03 11:55:57
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