Alabama carried out America’s first execution using nitrogen gas Thursday night, killing a convicted murderer whose jury voted to spare him life and opening a new frontier in how states execute death row inmates.
The execution of condemned inmate Kenneth Smith, 58, began at 7:53 p.m. Central time and was pronounced dead at 8:25 p.m. in an execution chamber in Atmore, Ala., according to John K. Hamm, the state. commissioner of the penitentiary system. The US Supreme Court allowed the execution to go ahead over the objections of its three liberal justices and the concerns of death penalty opponents that the untried method could cause Mr Smith to suffer.
Mr Smith, who was strapped into a wardrobe with a mask placed over his head, appeared conscious for several minutes after nitrogen gas began flowing into the mask, depriving him of oxygen, according to a report by five journalists of Alabama who attended the execution. State lawyers had previously argued in court filings that a nitrogen execution would ensure “sensations in seconds.”
He then “rocked and writhed” for at least two minutes before breathing heavily for several minutes. Eventually, the reporters said, his breathing slowed until it was no longer apparent.
Mr Hamm said it appeared Mr Smith tried to hold his breath as long as he could and played down Mr Smith’s body movements, saying “nothing was unusual from what we expected”.
Before he was executed, Mr. Smith gave a lengthy final statement from the execution chamber in which he said, in part, “Tonight, Alabama took humanity a step back,” according to witnesses.
Lee Hedgespeth, a reporter in Alabama who witnessed the execution, said Mr. Smith’s head jerked violently back and forth in the minutes after the execution began.
“This was the fifth execution I’ve seen in Alabama, and I’ve never seen such a violent reaction to an execution,” Mr. Hedgepeth said.
Mr Smith was one of three men convicted of the 1988 murder of Elizabeth Sennett, whose pastor husband had recruited them to kill her.
It was the second time Alabama had tried to kill Mr. Smith, following a botched lethal injection in November 2022 in which executioners could not find a suitable vein before his death warrant expired. Mr. Smith’s lawyers and the state’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, said Thursday’s execution was the first carried out using nitrogen anywhere in the world.
Other states have looked to Alabama’s experience as they face growing problems obtaining lethal injection drugs due to pressure from medical groups, activists and lawyers. Mississippi and Oklahoma have authorized their prisons to carry out executions by nitrogen hypoxia, as the method is known, if they cannot use lethal injection, although they have never tried it.
“Our proven method offers a blueprint for other states and a warning to those who would consider shedding innocent blood,” Mr Marshall said, suggesting the availability of an “effective” method of execution could act as a deterrent to criminals.
The Supreme Court ruling allowing the execution to go ahead did not provide an explanation, as is often the case when judges rule on emergency applications. The three liberal members of the court disagreed with the majority decision.
In a sharply worded dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor expressed concerns about Alabama’s new method. “Having failed to kill Smith on her first attempt, Alabama selected him as her ‘guinea pig’ to try a method of execution she had never attempted before,” he wrote. “People are watching.”
Justice Elena Kagan, in a separate dissent joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote that she would stay the execution to give the court time to consider the “extraordinary circumstances” surrounding Alabama’s new execution method and challenges by Mr. .Smith.
“The state’s protocol was only recently developed and is even now under review to prevent Smith from choking on his own vomit,” Judge Kagan wrote.
Nitrogen hypoxia has been used in some assisted suicides in Europe and elsewhere, although the exact method used by Alabama differs from common practice. State lawyers had argued that such a death was painless and quick. They also noted that Mr. Smith and his lawyers had themselves identified the method as preferable to the state’s troubled practice of lethal injection.
But in their latest petition to the Supreme Court, Mr. Smith’s lawyers argued that the Alabama protocol would create a significant risk of suffering.
Dr. Assisted suicide pioneer Philip Nitschke, who estimated he had seen about 50 nitrogen deaths, had said that wearing a mask could lead to problems that could involve significant distress and pain.
Governor Kay Ivey of Alabama said she chose not to exercise clemency power to spare Mr. Smith.
“The execution was carried out legally under nitrogen hypoxia, the method Mr Smith had previously requested as an alternative to lethal injection,” Ms Ivey said in a statement.
A day earlier, the High Court had also refused to intervene in an appeal by lawyers in a separate case, in which they had argued that trying to execute Mr Smith a second time amounted to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment, in part because of how painful the 2022 execution attempt was.
Mr. Smith’s case is unique in part because the jury that convicted him of murder in 1996 also voted 11 to 1 to sentence him to life in prison rather than death, but the judge overturned their decision. Alabama has since made it illegal for judges to dismiss juries that recommended life sentences — a ban that now exists in every state — but the new law does not apply to earlier cases.
Mr Smith’s spiritual adviser, the Reverend Jeff Hood, was in the room during the execution and said he had watched “minutes of someone fighting for his life”. He said earlier on Thursday that Mr Smith had serious fears that the execution was going wrong. “He’s terrified that this thing is going to torture him completely,” Mr Hood said before the execution.
Mr. Smith, he said, ate his last meal Thursday morning: a T-bone steak, hash browns and eggs, all from Waffle House and slathered with steak sauce. Prison officials said that to reduce the chance of Mr Smith vomiting during the execution, he would not be allowed to eat after 10am.
Before Thursday’s execution, a White House spokeswoman declined to comment on the matter.
“This is a state-level case and I’m not going to talk about the specifics of that particular case,” spokeswoman Olivia Dalton said, adding that President Biden had broad concerns about how the death penalty is applied and whether or not it is applied. consistent with our values of justice and fairness.”
Mr. Biden campaigned to end the federal death penalty after it was resurrected by President Donald J. Trump. Under Mr. Biden, the Justice Department has instituted a moratorium on federal executions, but the department also said this month that it would seek the death penalty against the white gunman who fatally shot 10 black men in a racially motivated attack in a Buffalo, New York. greengrocer’s.
The first use of nitrogen gas in Alabama comes after several botched or difficult lethal injections in which executioners struggled to find veins in the men they were trying to kill.
In 2022, executioners tried for hours to access the veins of Joe Nathan James, eventually slicing into one of his arms in what is known as a “cutdown” in order to administer the lethal drugs, according to a private autopsy. As of 2018, three death row inmates in the state, including Mr. Smith, have survived execution attempts due to difficulty inserting an IV line.
Four days after failing to execute Mr. Smith in 2022, Governor Ivey, a Republican, halted all executions in the state and asked the prison system, the Alabama Department of Corrections, to review its procedures. The state resumed executing people in 2023, killing two men by lethal injection.
After Thursday’s execution, one of the murder victim’s sons, Michael Sennett, who witnessed it, spoke briefly to reporters.
“Nothing that happened here today is going to bring mom back,” he said. “It’s a bittersweet day. We’re not going to jump up and down and scream and yell “pee” and all that. It’s not us. We’re glad this day is over.”
Ms. Sennett was stabbed 10 times in the attack by Mr. Smith and another man, according to court documents. Her husband, Charles Sennett Sr, had recruited a man to handle her murder, who in turn recruited Mr Smith and a third man. Mr. Sennett arranged the killing in part to collect on an insurance policy he had taken out on his wife, according to court records. He had promised the men $1,000 each for the murder.
Mr Sennett later took his own life. One of the other men involved in the killing was executed by lethal injection in 2010, and another was sentenced to life in prison and died in 2020.
Katie Rogers contributed to the report.
