The southern US state of Alabama on Thursday put to death a convicted murderer using nitrogen gas, the first time the controversial method criticized by human rights advocates has been used in the nation.
Kenneth Smith was pronounced dead at 8:25pm, the state attorney general said.
“Justice has been served. Tonight, Kenneth Smith was put to death for the heinous act he committed over 35 years ago,” a statement by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said.
Photo: Reuters
Smith, 58, was on death row for more than three decades after being convicted of the 1988 murder-for-hire of a pastor’s wife.
He was put to death at Holman Prison in Atmore, Alabama, by nitrogen hypoxia, which involved pumping nitrogen gas into a mask, causing him to suffocate.
Media witnesses said that he “began writhing and thrashing for approximately two to four minutes, followed by around five minutes of heavy breathing,” local news outlet AL.com reported.
Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm told reporters that it appeared Smith was “holding his breath as long as he could,” and that there was “involuntary movement” and gasping, which was “expected.”
The curtain over the media witness room opened at 7:53pm, AL.com said, with Smith pronounced dead less than 35 minutes later.
Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, previously said that Alabama was “using an untested, unproven method of execution.”
“It’s never been used before to execute anyone in the United States, or anyone in the world as far as we know,” Maher said.
Smith was subjected to a botched execution attempt in November 2022, when prison officials were unable to set intravenous lines to administer a lethal injection.
Smith’s last words on Thursday were: “Tonight, Alabama caused humanity to take a step backward,” according to the local CBS affiliate, whose reporter witnessed the execution.
“I am leaving with love, peace and light... I love you. Thank you for supporting me. I love all of you,” Smith said.
The Alabama Department of Corrections said that Smith had a last meal of steak, hash browns and eggs on Thursday morning. The last US execution using gas was in 1999 when a convicted murderer was put to death using hydrogen cyanide gas.
There were 24 executions in the US last year, all of them carried out by lethal injection.
Alabama is one of three US states that have approved the use of nitrogen hypoxia as a method of execution, along with Oklahoma and Mississippi.
Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the UN rights office in Geneva, Switzerland, last week urged Alabama to abandon the plan to execute Smith using what she called a “novel and untested” method.
Shamdasani said it could “amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, under international human rights law.”
While nitrogen gas had never previously been used to execute humans in the US, it is sometimes used to kill animals, but Shamdasani said that even the American Veterinary Medical Association recommends giving large animals a sedative when being euthanized in this manner.
Alabama’s protocol for execution by nitrogen asphyxiation makes no provision for sedation.
The state of Alabama defended the method of execution, claiming it is “perhaps the most humane method of execution ever devised.”
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