Alabama executes convicted murderer with nitrogen gas

Alabama on Thursday evening carried out the first execution of an inmate in the United States using nitrogen gas.

Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, who was convicted in a murder for hire in 1988, was executed at 8:25 pm CT at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, according to The Associated Press.

Smith was strapped to a gurney and made to breathe nitrogen gas through a mask apparatus, depriving him of oxygen.

The execution took about 22 minutes, and Smith appeared conscious for several minutes, the AP's reporter wrote.

"For at least two minutes, he appeared to shake and writhe on the gurney, sometimes pulling against the restraints." AP reported. "That was followed by several minutes of heavy breathing, until breathing was no longer perceptible."

The state had said that the nitrogen gas would cause unconsciousness within seconds and death within minutes. A state attorney earlier told the US 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that nitrogen hypoxia would be "the most painless and humane method of execution known to man".

Smith's witnesses were reported to be his wife, two sons, attorney and a friend.

Smith previously had survived one planned execution. In November 2022, Alabama officials aborted his execution by lethal injection after struggling for hours to insert an intravenous line's needle into his body.

Smith was one of three men convicted in the murder of a woman whose husband, a pastor, had recruited them to kill her. Smith confessed to his role in the crime after the slaying, and court records show that he was paid about $1,000 for killing her.

The execution was to be the first attempt to use a new method since the 1982 introduction of lethal injection, now the most common capital punishment method in the US.

CNN reported that little was known about the set method of execution because the state's published protocol bears redactions that experts say shield key details from public scrutiny. The state, in court records, indicated the redactions were made to maintain security.

Smith's lawyers lodged a petition to the US Supreme Court on Thursday morning to block the execution, after the court denied his appeal application on Wednesday without comment.

The Supreme Court on Thursday evening declined to halt the execution.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who along with two other liberal justices dissented in the decision, wrote: "Having failed to kill Smith on its first attempt, Alabama has selected him as its ‘guinea pig' to test a method of execution never attempted before. The world is watching."

Smith's attorneys had asked the high court to consider the latest arguments that the new method violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment and deserved more legal scrutiny before it was used on a person.

The lawyers argued that Alabama's plan for Smith's execution, including what they describe as a "one-size-fits-all mask", would create a substantial risk that he would "be left in a persistent vegetative state, experience a stroke, or asphyxiate on his own vomit". They identified alternative methods that they said would reduce the risk, including nitrogen hypoxia using a hood or closed chamber, as well as a firing squad.

Alabama approved the use of nitrogen hypoxia for executions in 2018 because the primary method, lethal injection, has become increasingly difficult due to a shortage of the necessary drugs.

Two other states, Oklahoma and Mississippi also have approved the use of nitrogen hypoxia, but neither has tried it.

Though poisonous gases such as hydrogen cyanide have been used in executions in past decades, it was to be the first time an execution was performed anywhere using an inert gas to suffocate someone, capital punishment experts said.

Opponents of capital punishment, including United Nations human rights experts, have said the method amounts to experimenting on humans and could merely injure him without killing him or lead to a torturous death.

"It's a sad, awful day for everyone, no matter what your perspective is," the Reverend Jeff Hood, Smith's spiritual adviser, said in an interview before heading into the prison. "But I think that this is particularly horrific in that we're going to be conducting a human experiment for the first time. We're going to be legally suffocating someone."

Heng Weili in New York contributed to this story.