[ad_1] A criminal will be put to death in the US in the next few hours in an untested new execution method slammed as being “horrific”.The state of
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A criminal will be put to death in the US in the next few hours in an untested new execution method slammed as being “horrific”.
The state of Alabama has 30 hours from 6am Thursday (11pm AEDT) to execute Kenneth Eugene Smith after he lost a last-minute appeal on Wednesday to the US Supreme Court to halt the sentence.
Rather than lethal injection or electrocution, Smith will become the first person in the US to be killed by nitrogen hypoxia.
Murder for hire
Smith, 58, was convicted in the 1988 murder-for-hire slaying of Elizabeth Sennett in north western Alabama.
Ms Sennett’s pastor husband Charles Sennett, who was having an affair, deeply in debt and wanted to collect an insurance payment, was behind her grisly murder.
Smith was indirectly hired by Sennet and paid $US1000 to kill his wife.
She was repeatedly stabbed and beaten with a fire extinguisher. Mr Sennett took his own life a week later.
The other man convicted in the slaying, John Forrest Parker, 42, was executed by lethal injection in June 2010.
Smith survived an attempt to execute him by lethal injection in November 2022.
After almost four hours strapped to a gurney in the death chamber of Alabama’s Holman Correctional Facility, in Atmore 90km north east of the city of Mobile, officials gave up trying to insert an intravenous line into his arm.
This led to the novel method of execution by nitrogen gas.
Execution method
During the procedure, an airtight mask will be fitted to Smith’s face.
A warden will read the death warrant and he will be asked if he has any last words.
A colourless and odourless stream of nitrogen gas will then flow through the mask.
Nitrogen makes up 78 per cent of the air we normally inhale and is harmless due to the presence of oxygen. However, pure nitrogen gas will kill by literally suffocating the person exceeds to it.
The gas stream will continue for 15 minutes or for “five minutes following a flat line indication on the EKG, whichever is longer,” according to the state protocol.
Alabama insisted that Smith should be unconscious within seconds and dead in minutes.
But others disagree with this prediction particularly given it has never been used before. They warn it could lead to a long a painful death, he could potentially choke if eh vomits in the mask of the method could leave him alive but with brain damage.
“Horror is an understatement,” said Reverend Dr Jeff Hood, Smith’s spiritual adviser, about the execution method.
“The state of Alabama now has the permission of the federal court to suffocate its citizens.”
The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights has likened Smith’s gassing to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Smith appealed to the US Supreme Court and the lower 11th US circuit county of appeals. But both courts rejected his pleas.
In the last four decades the peak of US executions were in 1999 when 98 prisoners were put to death. In 2023, a little more than 20 people were executed.
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