Death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, was executed by nitrogen gas Thursday night in Alabama. This method is controversial because it causes oxygen deprivation and has been criticized as inhumane.
Smith, a convicted murderer, was pronounced dead at 8:25 p.m. local time at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.
Prior to Smith's execution, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block the nation's first execution using the new method since 1982, prohibiting the state from using nitrogen hypoxia to execute Smith. This is the second ruling in recent days that allows the case to proceed.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Jackson dissented.
Smith's last meal consisted of steak, hash browns and eggs, according to the Alabama Department of Corrections. His wife, son, two friends and a lawyer visited him.
The execution drew national attention because the person inhaled nitrogen gas through a mask and died from lack of oxygen.
Smith's lawyers argued that Alabama was trying to use him as a “guinea pig” for an unresolved method of execution after the state survived an earlier attempt to carry out the death penalty by lethal injection.
Alabama inmate who survived botched execution fears second attempt won't work
Kenneth Eugene Smith was convicted of murder in the 1988 murder of a preacher's wife. He was the first American inmate to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia. (Alabama Department of Corrections, via AP/File)
The defense also argued that the second execution was unconstitutional because Smith was one of three Alabama death row inmates to survive a botched lethal injection in 2022.
The 2022 attempt lasted more than four hours and caused Smith “severe physical pain and emotional distress, including post-traumatic stress disorder,” lawyers said.
of United States Supreme Court On Wednesday, it denied Smith's initial request to stay.
“The application for a stay of execution of a death row convict, presented to and referred to the Court by Judge (Clarence) Thomas, is denied,” the court said.
In a statement before the execution, Mr. Smith and his chaplain, Dr. Jeff Hood, said: “The eyes of the world are on this impending moral apocalypse. Our prayer is that people do not turn away. We cannot simply normalize suffocating each other. .”
Smith was sentenced to death for his role in 1988. murder for hire The conspiracy to murder Elizabeth Sennett. He and John Forrest Parker murdered the preacher's wife for $1,000 each.
The lethal injection room at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. (AP Photo/File)
Sennett's husband committed suicide a week after the murder.
Parker was executed by lethal injection in 2010.
