22mins to die
»»State claims new method of killing ‘humane’ »»Murderer, 58, was ‘writhing & shaking in pain’
OFFICIALS had claimed that convicted murderer Kenneth Smith’s execution by nitrogen gas would be “quick and painless”.
But it took warders 22 minutes to carry out the death warrant handed down by a judge in Alabama, US.
Witnesses said Smith, 58, was writhing and shaking in agony for up to four minutes as he was killed using the previously untested method.
He is said to have remained conscious, breathing heavily and gasping for a further eight minutes as his sons and wife Deanna watched.
His spiritual adviser, the Reverend Jeff Hood, described it as “the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen”.
Smith had survived a previous attempt to execute him with lethal injection in November 2022.
He was one of two men convicted for the contract killing of a preacher’s wife in Alabama in 1988. Prosecutors said the pair were each paid €936 to kill Elizabeth Sennett on behalf of her husband, who was deeply in debt and wanted to collect on insurance.
America is now deeply divided over its use of the capital punishment due to its inability to humanely execute people as the Constitution demands.
Anti-death-penalty activists placed signs along the road to the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.
The Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said nitrogen ran for about 15 minutes, and Smith was pronounced dead at 8.25pm on Thursday.
Asked about the shaking, he added Smith appeared to hold his breath “for as long as he could” and may have “struggled against his restraints”.
Mr Hamm added: “There was some involuntary movement and some agonal breathing, so that was all expected and is in the side effects that we’ve seen and researched on nitrogen hypoxia.
“So nothing was out of the ordinary of what we were expecting.”
Agonal breathing is usually described as a kind of gasping seen in people who are dying. Steve Marshall, Alabama’s attorney general, said the execution “proved” nitrogen was “an effective and humane method of execution”.
His words gave officials in the 26 death penalty states an ominous boost that the gas could become an alternative to lethal injection. Some 2,400 US prisoners are on death row.
However, the European Union and UN Human Rights Office expressed grave misgivings over the execution.
Rev Hood said the inmate convulsed when the gas was turned on and “popped up on the gurney” as he repeatedly gasped and heaved.
He added: “An unbelievable evil was unleashed tonight.”
Federal courts had rejected Smith’s bid to block his death, with his lawyers arguing the nitrogen gas would cause suffering.
A last-ditch appeal to the US Supreme Court also failed.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who along with two other liberal justices dissented, wrote: “Alabama has selected him as its guinea pig to test an execution method never attempted before. The world is watching.”
It was the first time a new execution method has been used in the US since 1982 when lethal injections were introduced. Since the makers of the drugs stopped selling to the 27 states that still use the death penalty, officials have struggled to find an alternative. America’s appetite for the death penalty has slowly changed since it was reintroduced in 1976.
In October, a survey found for the first time that more Americans believe executions are applied unfairly, with support for capital punishment at a five-decade low. President Joe Biden has previously vowed to abolish it but, so far, no action has been taken.
The US director of UK human rights charity Reprieve, Maya Foa, said: “They said lethal injection was humane – that was a lie.
“They’ll claim this execution was humane, and that is a lie. The purpose of these methods is to hide pain.
“How many more prisoners must die agonising deaths before we see executions for what they really are: the state violently taking a life?”