American killer was “prescribed” an unusual method of execution: veterinarians are against

The US state of Alabama can execute a prisoner by poisoning him to death with nitrogen gas, a federal court has ruled – after a convicted prisoner’s appeal that the method of capital punishment was untested and could lead to a brutal death was rejected.

In Alabama, it will be allowed to execute a murderer by asphyxiating him with nitrogen – an experimental method even veterinarians considered too cruel for most animals, and the United Nations equated it with torture.

According to the Daily Mail, 58-year-old Kenneth Eugene Smith was destined to become the first person in the United States and possibly the world to be executed using nitrogen hypoxia after a federal court rejected his appeal.

The condemned man spent more than three decades on death row in a 1989 murder-for-hire case and last year survived a botched attempt to execute him by lethal injection after bungling orderlies at Holman Prison in Atmore spent 90 minutes trying to find a vein.

In the end, they decided to remove Smith from his holding cell and strap him to the same gurney on which he survived the lethal injection attempt before he was given the opportunity to make a final statement to his family and the family of his victim.

Then, in the execution scenario, the curtain on the small window in front of the observation deck is drawn, after which an industrial-style respirator is placed on the condemned person’s face, through which pure nitrogen is pumped for at least 15 minutes, as a result of which the condemned person dies from lack of oxygen.

This is the first attempt to use a new method of execution in the United States since the introduction of lethal injection in 1982, the Daily Mail notes, recalling that veterinarians have ruled out the use of nitrogen as a method of euthanasia for most animals except pigs due to fears that it could lead to to unnecessary suffering of animals and risk to the health of other people in the same premises.

Smith’s lawyers have entered a legal battle to stop a second attempt to execute him, arguing that the state is seeking to make Smith a “test case” for a new method that they argue violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

But the state of Alabama insists that such strangulation is humane, and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to block the execution. The U.S. Supreme Court also rejected Smith’s argument that such a method of capital punishment would be unconstitutional.

Smith is one of two men convicted of the 1988 contract killing of a preacher’s wife that shocked a small community in north Alabama. Prosecutors said he and another man were each paid $1,000 to kill Elizabeth Sennett for her husband, who was deeply in debt and wanted to collect the insurance money.

According to the Daily Mail, Sennett, 45, was found dead on March 18, 1988, in her Colbert County home with eight stab wounds in the chest and one on each side of the neck.

Her husband, Charles Sennett Sr., committed suicide as the investigation focused on him as a suspect, according to court documents.

Smith’s original conviction in 1989 was overturned on appeal, but the man was retried and convicted in 1996.

The jury recommended life imprisonment by a vote of 11 to 1, but the judge overturned that decision and sentenced him to death. Alabama no longer allows judges to overrule jury decisions in death penalty cases.

John Forrest Parker, another man convicted of murder, was executed in 2010.

Smith was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection last year, but those involved in the execution struggled to find a clean vein in time before the execution warrant expired.

Some US states are looking for new ways to execute prisoners as the drugs used in lethal injections, the most common method of execution in the United States, become increasingly difficult to find.

Three states – Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma – have approved the use of nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method, but so far no state has attempted to use the untested method.

The victim’s son, Charles Sennett Jr., told WAAY-TV that the convicted Smith “has to pay for what he did.”

“And some of these people there say, ‘Well, he doesn’t have to suffer like that.’ Well, he didn’t ask his mom how she should suffer, did he?” the son says. “They just did it. They stabbed her – several times.”

State officials predicted that nitrogen gas would cause unconsciousness within seconds and death within minutes. The state’s attorney told the 11th Circuit it would be “the most painless and humane method of execution known to man.”

Experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council warned that they believed the execution method could violate the ban on torture. Much of what is known about deaths from nitrogen gas occurs as a result of industrial accidents or suicide attempts.