This Wednesday, January 10, a US federal judge authorized the state of Alabama, test nitrogen gas for the first time in a run that is scheduled for January 25.
The prisoner who is to be executed, Kenneth Eugene Smith, sentenced to death for having murdered a woman in exchange for money in 1988. The prisoner had filed a lawsuit alleging that Alabama intends to use him as a guinea pig for a method never used before.
The decision made by federal judge R. Austin Huffaker can still be appealed by Smith's defense before two higher courts, including the United States Supreme Court.
Alabama has been working on a protocol for years to execute this new method of nitrogen asphyxiation. According to the protocol, the inmates will be put on a mask that will replace oxygen with nitrogen gas, causing death.
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The man is 58 years old.
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States that still use the death penalty usually execute prisoners with a lethal injection, but in recent years it has become increasingly difficult for them to acquire the components due to the refusal of pharmaceutical companies to allow them to be used for this purpose.
In addition, the complications that have arisen in several executions have led to the method being questioned as inhumane. and which has been the subject of legal disputes for years.
Alabama's attempt to use a new procedure responds to those difficulties experienced with lethal injection.
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Smith, who is 58, has been on Alabama's death row for more than three decades for murdering a woman in 1988, Elizabeth Sennett, on behalf of her husband, Charles Sennett, a man who sought to collect compensation for the death of his wife.
Smith and an accomplice, John Forrest Parker, were each paid $1,000 for the murder.
Sennett committed suicide a week after the murder, when he realized that he was considered a suspect by the authorities, and Parker was also sentenced to death and was executed in 2010 by lethal injection.
Alabama attempted to execute Smith in November 2022, but the executioner was unable to insert IVs. As part of a subsequent agreement, Alabama pledged not to again attempt to kill Smith with lethal injection.
Since the Supreme Court reintroduced the death penalty in 1976, 1,582 prisoners have been executed in the United States. Of them, 72 in Alabama.
*With information from EFE
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