Crime & Justice

US judge allows Alabama to use nitrogen in first execution

Washington, Jan 10 (EFE).- A US federal judge on Wednesday authorized the state of Alabama to use nitrogen gas for the first time in an execution scheduled for Jan. 25.

The condemned man, Kenneth Eugene Smith, who was sentenced to death for the 1988 murder of a woman for money, filed a lawsuit alleging that Alabama intended to use him as a guinea pig for nitrogen hypoxia.

US District Judge R. Austin Huffaker’s decision can still be appealed by Smith’s defense to two higher courts, including the US Supreme Court.

Alabama has been working for years on a protocol for execution using this new method of nitrogen asphyxiation.

Under the protocol, inmates are fitted with a mask that replaces oxygen with nitrogen gas, causing death.

States that still use the death penalty often execute prisoners by lethal injection, but in recent years they have found it increasingly difficult to obtain the components because pharmaceutical companies have refused to provide them for this purpose.

In addition, complications in several executions have led to the method being challenged as inhumane and has been the subject of legal disputes for years.

Alabama’s attempt to use a new procedure responds to these difficulties experienced with lethal injection.

Smith, a 58-year-old white man, has been on Alabama’s death row for more than three decades for murdering a woman, Elizabeth Sennett, in 1988 at the behest of her husband, Charles Sennett, who sought to collect compensation.

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 he was considered a suspect by authorities.

Parker was 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 the IVs.

As part of a subsequent plea agreement, Alabama pledged not to use the lethal injection on Smith.

Since the Supreme Court reintroduced the death penalty in 1976, 1,582 prisoners have been executed in the United States. Of those, 72 in Alabama. EFE

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