On November 1, the Alabama Supreme Court approved the new death penalty, allowing the state to execute a man through asphyxiation with nitrogen gas.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey scheduled a date with the Department of Corrections to execute the defendant, Kenneth Smith, who underwent the third botched execution in 2022 as a test subject for the new method of the death penalty.
Nitrogen Gas Execution as New Death Penalty
Attorney General Steve Marshall explained the method of execution and requested the use of nitrogen hypoxia for the new death penalty. The lawyers for Smith said that the procedure involves administering gas to a prisoner by placing a mask on their face.
Robert Grass, an attorney for Smith, said that the new experimental method was unwarranted and unjust for the second attempt to execute Smith. According to The Guardian, the lawyers for Smith have encouraged the court to reject the execution of Smith.
Furthermore, the Death Penalty Information Center also denounced the execution, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asked the governor to block the new method.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, about the recent supreme court's decision. He said that Ms. Senett's family, the victim's family of the past murder case of Smith, has waited for an unconscionable 35 years to see justice served.
"Today, the Ala. Sup [sic] court cleared the way for Kenneth Smith to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia for the 1988 murder-for-hire of Elizabeth. Though the wait has been far too long, I am grateful that our talented capital litigators have nearly gotten this case to the finish line," Marshall said.
Smith's 1988 Sentence Over Murder Case
Smith has been sentenced to death since 1996 and admitted to his role in a "murder-for-hire" scheme that resulted in the death of Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett in 1988.
According to Sky News, he was one of the two men convicted in the murder-for-hire case. The prosecutors reported the two were each paid $1,000 to kill Ms. Sennett on behalf of her pastor husband.
The pastor was deeply in debt and wanted to demand insurance. The pastor killed himself after a week. The other man was executed in 2010, while Smith survived an attempt when workers could not find his veins for lethal injection before the death warrant expired at midnight in 2022 for the third time.
Alabama would be the first state to attempt an execution with nitrogen gas. However, two other states have already authorized nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method.
The supporters of the new method said that the procedure would result in a painless death, but the opponents compared the new death penalty to human experimentation.
