US: Alabama executes Kenneth Smith for carrying out first nitrogen gas execution

First nitrogen gas execution: In the world's first known execution by nitrogen hypoxia, the US state of Alabama put to death Kenneth Eugene Smith, a prisoner on death row for his role in a contract killing more than three decades ago. 

Smith's execution was preceded by months of legal battles over whether it was constitutional to use nitrogen hypoxia in capital punishment, as the method was not known to have ever been used before in a prison setting.

Alabama prison officials kept many of the details about how they would carry out the new method a secret from the public.

Smith, 58, was pronounced dead at 8:25 pm (local time) on Thursday at the William C Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.

Notably, states that still use the death penalty have struggled to obtain lethal injection drugs, with lawmakers and prison officials adopting alternative methods as backup options. Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma have approved nitrogen hypoxia, while other states have brought back the long-disused firing squad, media sources reported. 

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The US top court rejected Smith's last-ditch request to intervene late Thursday. The court's three liberal justices - Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson - noted their dissent in the court's order, which did not explain the majority's reasoning, sources reported.

A jury voted 11-1 in favor of life in prison at Smith's second trial before a judge overrode its verdict and sentenced Smith to death. The practice, known as judicial override, has since been eliminated in all 50 states; Alabama was the last state to do so, in 2017, as per media sources. 

Marshall, Alabama's attorney general, said that was unlikely, noting that Smith would have taken his last meal more than eight hours before the execution. Should Smith vomit, the state said, officials would remove and clean the mask and clear Smith's airway before continuing.

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In two key changes to Alabama's execution procedure, the Alabama Supreme Court in 2023 extended the typical 24-hour timeline for execution warrants to let the governor set the timeline and eliminated the process of automatically reviewing death penalty cases for "plain errors" during the trial phase.

Smith was convicted in Sennett's 1988 death in Colbert County, Ala. Sennett was found beaten and stabbed in her home, which was staged to look like a robbery. Investigators later found that Sennett's husband, the Rev. Charles Sennett, had hired a hit man to kill her and collect on her life insurance policy to cover his debts, media sources reported. 

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John Forrest Parker and Smith were paid USD 1,000 each by a middleman on Sennett's behalf to carry out the murder. Charles Sennett killed himself when police learned of his role in the plot, while Billy Gray Williams, the middleman, was sentenced to life in prison. Parker was executed in 2010. 

(With inputs from agencies)
 

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