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Alabama ready to help other states with ‘humane’ nitrogen executions after gas caused inmate to ‘shake and writhe’

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 30, 2024, 8:58 am CST

Alabama is ready to help other states carry out “humane” nitrogen gas executions after using it for the first time Thursday to kill inmate Kenneth Smith, the state’s attorney general has said.

Republican Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall called the execution “humane” in a Jan. 25 press release, even though a report by a reporter from the Associated Press said Smith “began to shake and writhe violently, in thrashing spasms and seizure-like movements” after the execution began. The shaking continued for at least two minutes.

The U.N. Human Rights Office and the European Union criticized the execution method, USA Today reports.

In a press conference Friday, Marshall said Alabama stands ready to help other states with nitrogen hypoxia executions, Reuters reports.

“Alabama has done it, and now so can you,” he said.

Oklahoma and Mississippi have approved nitrogen gas executions, according to Reuters.

Marshall also indicated that 43 other Alabama inmates have sought nitrogen gas executions.

Smith was executed for his role in the 1988 murder-for-hire killing of Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett, a pastor’s wife. The pastor, who later killed himself, allegedly sought the murder to collect on an insurance policy.

Smith was initially scheduled for execution in November 2022, but executioners were unable to insert an intravenous line before the death warrant expired.

The U.S. Supreme Court had twice declined to stop the execution, in decisions Jan. 24 and 25, the New York Times reports.

On Jan. 24, the Supreme Court refused to block the execution based on the argument that the second try constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

On Jan. 25, the high court refused to act based on an argument that Alabama wasn’t ready to try the untested execution method, subjecting him to an unconstitutional risk of cruel and unusual punishment. The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices dissented.

“Having failed to kill Smith on its first attempt, Alabama has selected him as its ‘guinea pig’ to test a method of execution never attempted before,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.