I'll concede the point that there are people we can do without - Charlie Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Celine Dion - not that many, but more than we like to think about.
But when it's known that a double digit percentage of people who have been convicted of a capital crime - and condemned to die for it - are later proved innocent, then I've got a big fucking problem with what amounts to state-sponsored murder. (Death Penalty Info Ctr)
So, OK - if you've got the guy dead-to-rights, punch his ticket. But that whole death thing is pretty permanent. We need to be quite a bit more sure than we have been.
That 'being sure' thing becomes a bigger sticking point as we develop newer and better ways to snuff people that help us rationalize our primitive urge to kill in retribution.
Alabama puts Kenneth Smith to death in first execution with nitrogen gas
Kenneth Eugene Smith became the first prisoner known to be executed using a controversial method known as nitrogen hypoxia
ATMORE, Ala. — Alabama carried out the world’s first known execution by nitrogen hypoxia Thursday. The unprecedented method was administered to 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 p.m. at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.
Media witnesses arrived to the death chamber and saw Smith strapped to a gurney and fitted with a mask that covered his entire face.
“Tonight, Alabama caused humanity to take a step backward,” Smith said in a lengthy final statement transcribed by media witnesses. “I’m leaving with love, peace and light. Thank you for supporting me. Love all of you.”
Using sign language, Smith said, “I love you,” directing the sign toward the window of the viewing room where his family sat.
Smith appeared conscious for at least two minutes while the gas flowed to his mask, according to media witnesses. He shook and writhed for at least two minutes on the gurney, and this was followed by two minutes of deep breaths and then a period of time during which media witnesses were unable to determine if he was breathing.
The curtain closed at 8:15 p.m., 10 minutes before the state pronounced him dead.
Speaking to reporters after the execution, Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Q. Hamm called Smith’s shaking and writhing “involuntary” and said a 45-minute delay in the execution was due to “a hiccup on the EKG line” that was preventing a good reading.
Alabama officials had previously tried and failed to execute Smith by lethal injection in 2022. 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.
Despite the historic nature of Smith’s execution, only five independent witnesses from the news media, including the Associated Press, were able to observe the process. Smith’s family, as well as the family of his victim, Elizabeth Sennett, attended Thursday’s execution.
Medical professionals and human rights advocates had argued for months that Alabama’s efforts to use an untested execution method on Smith amounted to human experimentation, claims Smith’s lawyers took all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Late Thursday, the nation’s top court rejected Smith’s final request for intervention. 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. Sotomayor called Alabama’s method “untested” and said “the world is watching.”
“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,” she wrote.
Kagan, joined by Jackson, wrote separately to say that she would have put the execution on hold to give Smith and his lawyers more information about the state’s new protocol to allow him to fully challenge the execution method.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall (R) had defended the state’s protocol, previously calling nitrogen hypoxia “the most painless and humane method of execution known to man.” The state argued that the district court heard from at least a hundred experts and was not convinced the method was likely to lead to an unacceptable level of pain before death.
Former Alabama governor Don Siegelman (D) had also called on Gov. Kay Ivey (R) to stop Smith’s execution. Siegelman was among those who noted that Smith would not have faced execution if he were tried under modern standards.
“So here we are in Alabama about to execute Kenneth Eugene Smith, who was sentenced to death — not by a jury, as required by the U.S. Constitution — but by a judge, a practice banned in Alabama,” Siegelman said in a statement.
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.
Philip Nitschke, a leading figure in the controversial right-to-die movement, told The Washington Post that while nitrogen hypoxia is an effective method for willing euthanasia patients, Alabama’s execution protocol dramatically differs from legal assisted-suicide methods in Europe in both technique and spirit.
Nitschke said the right-to-die movement long ago moved away from using masks such as the one in Alabama, instead favoring methods such as hoods, specially designed bags and pods. Another key difference, he stressed, is that people are calm and cooperative in their assisted suicide, while a prisoner is anxiously awaiting an execution against his will.
In previous court filings, Smith’s attorneys said there was a real risk that Smith would vomit and choke to death during his execution. 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.
The state last attempted to execute Smith in November 2022. Prison staffers failed to find a vein to set Smith’s IV line, which, coupled with last-minute appeals, made it untenable to complete the lethal injection before Smith’s execution warrant expired at midnight. Smith’s was the third botched lethal injection in a row, prompting Ivey to temporarily pause executions for review.
The Alabama Department of Corrections rejected calls for a third-party review and conducted a review of its execution process internally. A public report was not released following Alabama’s four-month review; Hamm instead sent a two-page letter to Ivey in February 2023 noting four changes to the procedures, including obtaining new equipment and hiring more medical staffers.
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 so he could collect on her life insurance policy to cover his debts.
John Forrest Parker and Smith were paid $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.
