A death row prisoner who murdered a preacher's wife for a $1,000 bounty could not be given a lethal injection before the time limit passed on Thursday after a last minute appeal from his lawyers in Alabama.
Legal wranglings meant that the decision whether to execute Kenneth Eugene Smith carried on past the planned time at 6pm and then an hour was spent trying to find a vein to inject the lethal dose before officials gave up at 11.21pm.
An eleventh hour motion by Smith's legal team for an injunction was accepted by the 11th Circuit Court but the Alabama Attorney General's Office immediately appealed to the US Supreme Court claiming that the lateness of the motion was "gamesmanship".
