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The Supreme Court has rejected Kenneth Eugene Smith’s Hail Mary request for a stay in execution, meaning he is set to become the first person in US history to be put to death with nitrogen gas.
Smith was due to be executed at 6pm tonight at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. He had begged for it to be called off, citing his fears that the experimental gassing method will cause excruciating pain or cause him to vomit.
Earlier, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall insisted that the controversial method would be ‘painless’ for Smith.
The Supreme Court yesterday denied an application for a stay. He filed another request today as the execution approached, however justices denied his desperate appeal and sent him to the chamber.
As Smith now heads for the execution chamber, his prison pastor John Ewell told DailyMail.com that he is ‘really struggling’ to come to terms with his fate.
Kenneth Eugene Smith was sentenced to death in 1996 after admitting the murder-for-hire killing of a pastor’s wife who was beaten and stabbed in 1988
Smith was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder-for-hire slaying of Elizabeth Sennett, 45, who was found dead on March 18, 1988, in her home in Alabama’s Colbert County. She had been stabbed eight times in the chest and once on each side of neck
One of the primary reasons Alabama has turned to nitrogen gas for Smith’s execution has been the widespread struggles American prisons have had in obtaining lethal injection drugs in recent years.
Despite warnings from human rights groups over the use of the method, AG Marshall insisted that Smith’s fears are unfounded, a decision ultimately agreed by SCOTUS.
Quoting experts including euthanasia expert Dr. Philip Nitschke, Marshall said nitrogen hypoxia is a ‘peaceful’ way to end a human life.
Nitschke had testified for Smith’s legal team, who claimed the risks lay in the gas being administered through a mask.
In rebuttal, Marshall said the state’s mask has been inspected and is tight enough to ensure no oxygen leaks in and prolongs the proceedings.
He quoted Nitschke’s support of nitrogen hypoxia in assisted suicide as further evidence of how painless the execution will be.
‘Among many problems for Smith was his star witness, Dr. Philip Nitschke, who might as well have testified for the State.
‘Before joining Smith’s cause, Dr. Nitschke said that critics of Alabama’s method were “misrepresenting the science,”‘ Marshall wrote.
Dr. Nitschke – who has been referred to colloquially as ‘Dr. Death’ – said in the past that the method was ‘fast’, ‘effective’, ‘peaceful’ and ‘reliable.’
Kenneth Smith is set to be executed with nitrogen gas this week, which the UN has branded ‘torture’ and scientists have largely banned from animal experiments
Alabama’s lethal injection chamber at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala., is pictured in this Oct. 7, 2002 file photo. Kenneth Smith, 58, is scheduled to be executed Jan. 25, 2024
Elizabeth’s preacher husband Charles Sennett Sr., who was in debt and terrified that she’d discover it
He also dismissed Smith’s fears about vomiting into the mask.
‘Grasping at straws, Smith quibbled with the way nitrogen will be delivered. First, he said the mask is too loose and will let air inside it. But the State dispelled that concern when it produced the mask.
‘Second, Smith said that in the precise few seconds between when gas enters the mask and he loses consciousness, he will vomit and choke to death. But the district court found (twice over) that Smith’s fear was “speculative”, “theoretical,” and “unlikely.”
‘Smith alleged that he might vomit during the execution because he suffers from nausea.
‘On cross-examination, however, Smith’s expert Katherine Porterfield admitted that Smith had not reported any vomiting. ‘
He added that if Smith vomits into his mask before the gas is administered, the medical team in place will remove it and clean it.
If he vomits into his mask once the gas has been released, they will not intervene.
Smith said that is a ‘highly theoretical’ scenario based on a ‘cascade of unlikely events’.
Despite warnings from human rights organizations, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall says the execution is more gentle than Smith deserves
The execution method split opinions, with some feeling Smith’s crime in 1988 was worthy of his place on death row.
Aged 22, Smith was one of two men convicted in the murder-for-hire slaying of Elizabeth Sennett, 45, the wife of preacher Charles Sennet Sr. who paid the men to kill his wife in an insurance plot.
His initial 1989 conviction was overturned on appeal, but he was retried and convicted again in 1996.
Prosecutors said he and John Forrest Parker were each paid $1,000 for the murder, with Sennett’s husband hoping to collect on her insurance.
She was found dead March 18 that year in her home in Colbert County with eight stab wounds in the chest and one on each side of her neck.
After finding out that he was suspected of being involved in the plot, Charles Sennett Sr. killed himself.
John Forrest Parker, the other man convicted in the slaying, was executed in 2010
Smith was originally intended to be executed on November 17, 2022, but his lethal injection was botched.
Smith recalled being in ‘great pain’ because those tasked with injecting the lethal drugs – midazolam hydrochloride, rocuronium bromide and potassium chloride – were stabbing his muscle rather than finding a vein.
Smith has since said that the ceaseless jabs became so ridiculous they turned into farce, especially when one of the executioners eventually asked Smith to squeeze his hand to make the vein stand out better – a request Smith declined.
Unable to find a second usable vein, Smith’s gurney was tilted so that his feet were pointed upwards in what he presumed was an attempt to get blood to his head and leave a vein in his neck more pronounced.
He was left for several minutes before the IV returned with an even larger needle in an attempt to to attach a so-called central line (or central venous catheter) which is much longer than a regular intravenous line and goes all the way up to a vein near or inside the heart.
Smith reported that this pain became so excruciating after multiple attempts to use the larger needle successfully that he was shaking and wet himself.
The planned use of nitrogen gas for the first-time sparked outrage in the weeks leading up to Thursday’s planned execution among human rights and prison reform advocates.
Reprieve, an international human rights organization focused on incarceration, told DailyMail.com that Smith’s planned execution was a travesty.
‘Execution with nitrogen gas is the latest effort to obscure the violence of the state taking a human life,’ the organization said.
‘Despite almost fifty years of horrific scenes in the execution chamber as prisoners suffer agonizing deaths, proponents of capital punishment cling to the lie that it can be carried out humanely.
‘Alabama is once more seeking to hide the reality of what goes on in the execution chamber, switching methods to avoid having to answer questions about what went wrong last time, and now proposes to use a method that has been rejected by veterinarians as a way to kill animals.
‘Witnesses will not be able to tell how much Kenneth Smith is suffering as the nitrogen kills him: like the lethal injection protocol before it, the nitrogen protocol is specifically designed to hide pain.
‘The state of Alabama has tortured Mr. Smith once, stabbing him with needles for hours, and by using him as a guinea pig for a dangerous, untested new method of execution, it is torturing him again.’
