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A divided Alabama Supreme Court said the state can execute an inmate with nitrogen gas, a method that has not previously been used carry out a death sentence.
Alabama Supreme Court gives go-ahead for execution by nitrogen hypoxia.
A divided Alabama Supreme Court said the state can execute an inmate with nitrogen gas, a method that has not previously been used carry out a death sentence. The justices granted the state attorney general's request for an execution warrant for Kenneth Eugene Smith, one of two men convicted in the 1988 murder-for-hire slaying of Elizabeth Sennett in northwestern Alabama. The order did not specify the execution method, but the attorney general indicated in court filings that it intends to use nitrogen to put Smith to death.
The disclosure that the state is ready to use nitrogen hypoxia is expected to set off a new round of legal battles over the constitutionality of the method.
Smith was supposed to be executed in November 2022 by lethal injection, but corrections officers failed to insert an IV properly. The U.S. Supreme Court has authorized nitrogen hypoxia in his case.