Alabama death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith has been executed by being suffocated with nitrogen gas – the first person in US history to be put to death using the method.
Smith, 58, was pronounced dead at 8.25pm CT on Thursday at the William C Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, almost three decades after he was convicted in the 1988 murder-for-hire plot of Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett.
It comes after the supreme court denied an 11th-hour request for a stay of execution. The ruling received dissent from justice Sonia Sotomayor who wrote that the state had selected Smith as a “guinea pig” by using the untested method.
Smith was fitted with a face mask that blocked oxygen and caused nitrogen asphyxia – a move widely condemned by both the UNs and human rights groups.
In November 2022, Smith survived his first painful, botched execution by lethal injection, when officials struggled to insert an intravenous line into his system. After that, Smith said he favoured the nitrogen gas method.
Since then, his attorneys have sought to block the execution due to risks he would suffocate on his own vomit or be left in a vegetative state.