麻豆社

The US state of Alabama has carried out the first known execution of an inmate by suffocation with nitrogen gas.

Kenneth Smith, 58, lost two final appeals to the Supreme Court and one to a federal appeals court, arguing the execution was a cruel and unusual punishment.

In 2022, Alabama tried and failed to execute him by lethal injection.

He was convicted in 1989 of murdering a preacher's wife, Elizabeth Sennett, in a killing-for-hire.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, he is the first person to be put to death using pure nitrogen gas anywhere in the world.

Local officials insisted the untested method was humane, but critics called it cruel and experimental.

Lee Hedgepeth is a reporter who was present at the execution. He told Newsday: 鈥淚鈥檝e been to four previous executions and I鈥檝e never seen a condemned inmate thrash in the way that Kenneth Smith reacted today to the nitrogen gas鈥�I was sitting next to Kenneth鈥檚 wife鈥�as Kenneth began to thrash and jerk against the restraints inside the execution chamber, she fell to pieces. She began wailing and some of the guards had to tell her to 鈥榮tay quiet鈥�. As a journalist, it was shocking to see this type of violence in an execution.鈥�

(Picture: Shows Reverend Dr Jeff Hood (L), the spiritual advisor for convicted killer Kenneth Smith, comforting Kenneth Smith鈥檚 wife, Deanna Smith, as she describes the execution of her husband by nitrogen gas by the US State of Alabama in Atmore, Alabama on 25 January 2024. Credit: Dan Anderson / EPA.)

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