The US Supreme Court has declined a plea to halt Alabama from proceeding with the country's first-ever execution using the nitrogen gas. The court was hearing a matter related to the death penalty awarded to a convicted murderer Kenneth Smith. In 2022, he survived a botched lethal injection that helped prompt a review of the state’s death penalty procedures, Reuters reported.
The top court has denied Smith's request to stay his execution, which is scheduled for Thursday.
Further, the justices have declined to hear Smith's legal challenge contending that carrying out the second execution after the first failed attempt caused him severe trauma and violated the US Constitution’s Eighth Amendment’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment, the report stated.
With the Supreme Court's ruling, one of the last obstacles to the controversial scheduled execution has been removed. Alabama will have 30 hours starting on Thursday to execute Smith, barring an 11th-hour move from another court or state officials.
The Case
Kenneth Smith, 58, was earlier convicted of the murder of Elizabeth Sennett in 1988.
According to reports, Christian minister Charles Sennett hired Smith and another person to kill his wife Elizabeth after he had taken out a large insurance policy in her name. Elizabeth was stabbed multiple times and was also beaten with a blunt object. Her husband later committed suicide.
Smith's accomplice was later convicted of the murder and sentenced to death. He was executed in 2010.
Smith's execution is scheduled to take place at Holman Correctional Facility on Thursday (January 25).
While speaking to The Guardian on the phone earlier this week, Smith said he wasn't ready to return to the death chamber.
On November 22, the state tried to execute him once. He was strapped to a gurney for almost four hours as officials failed to inject him with lethal drugs. As per reports, Smith has been diagnosed with PTSD following the botched attempt.
“They have not given me a chance to heal... I am still suffering from the first execution and now we are doing this again. They won’t let me even have post-traumatic stress disorder – you know, this is ongoing stress disorder,” he said.
Nitrogen Hypoxia
On Thursday, officials at the Holman Correctional Facility are set to use a method which has never been tested in the US. The process, called the 'nitrogen hypoxia', will involve Smith being made to breathe pure nitrogen through a gas mask to cause fatal oxygen deprivation.
As part of this execution process, an inmate is deprived of oxygen until he/she breathes only nitrogen, causing asphyxiation.
The colourless and odourless gas makes up around 80% of the air we breathe, however, it is not deadly until separated from oxygen.
Joel Zivot, an associate professor in anaesthesiology at Emory University's School of Medicine said under certain circumstances, nitrogen can lead to death.
“But the terms of how it's going to exactly work is still unclear,” he told USA Today.
In 2018, former Alabama State Senator Tripp Pittman introduced a bill to allow the use of nitrogen hypoxia. Back then, he termed it as a "more humane method" of execution.
However, Zivot said Smith might suffer an intensely painful death even if the process works.
“This will not be a death that will be discreet. It may be prolonged. I think that there will be a good chance there will be some suffering,” he stated.
Nitrogen gas might even induce a seizure in Smith, he claimed, adding that when the gas is administered through a mask, it may induce Smith to vomit, causing him to choke to death.
Moreover, Zivot feels that if the mask is not secured well, then the nitrogen gas might also leak out, posing a threat to the execution team in the room.
(Edited by : Sudarsanan Mani)
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