Alabama Supreme Court approves use of nitrogen gas to execute prisoner for the first time
Convicted murderer Kenneth Eugene Smith survived a botched attempt to execute him using lethal injection last year. His lawyers have accused officials of using him as a "test subject".
Thursday 2 November 2023 14:57, UK
Alabama's Supreme Court has ruled a prisoner can be executed using nitrogen gas for the first time in the US.
The all-Republican court approved the request for the death of convicted murderer Kenneth Eugene Smith on Wednesday.
The panel of judges, who voted six to two in favour, did not specify the execution method themselves, but the state's attorney general made clear in his court filings that officials intended to use the gas.
Smith was sentenced to death following a trial in 1996. The jury recommended by 11 votes to one that he be imprisoned for life - but they were overruled by a judge.
The date of his execution will be set later by the state's governor Kay Ivey.
Smith was one of two men convicted over the 1988 murder-for-hire killing of Elizabeth Sennett in Alabama's Colbert County.
Prosecutors said the pair were each paid $1,000 to kill Ms Sennett on behalf of her pastor husband, who was deeply in debt and wanted to make an insurance claim. The husband killed himself a week later.
The other man convicted of the murder was executed in 2010.
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Alabama's attorney general Steve Marshall said her family had "waited an unconscionable 35 years to see justice served."
He added: "Today, the Alabama Supreme Court cleared the way for Kenneth Eugene Smith to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia.
"Though the wait has been far too long, I am grateful that our capital litigators have nearly gotten this case to the finish line."
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Lawyers for Smith had urged the court to reject the execution request.
They wrote in a September court filing: "The state seeks to make Mr Smith the test subject for the first ever attempted execution by an untested and only recently released protocol for executing condemned people by the novel method of nitrogen hypoxia."
'Front of the line' for execution
Alabama and two other US states, Oklahoma and Mississippi, have in recent years authorised the use of the gas as an execution method. However, no inmate has yet been put to death that way and Smith would be the first.
Nitrogen makes up 78% of the air inhaled by humans and is harmless when breathed in alongside proper levels of oxygen.
But during execution, a mask would be fitted over the inmate's face and their air supply would be replaced entirely with nitrogen until their heart stops.
Supporters of the method have suggested it would be painless, but opponents have compared it to human experimentation.
A previous attempt to put Smith to death by lethal injection last year was botched when the execution team failed to properly insert the required intravenous tubes.
His attorneys previously accused the state of trying to move the inmate to "the front of the line" for a nitrogen execution in order to moot their lawsuit challenging lethal injection procedures.