A convicted murderer thrashed and writhed as he was put to death in an Alabama jail with pure nitrogen gas, in a new and controversial method of execution.
Witnesses said that Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, appeared conscious for several minutes into Thursday's procedure as he was executed for the contract killing in 1988 of Elizabeth Sennett.
His body then convulsed violently and his breathing grew laboured, and he was pronounced dead after 22 minutes.
At the start, following a last meal of steak with hash browns, Smith gestured “I love you” towards family members present in the execution chamber.
“Tonight Alabama causes humanity to take a step backwards,” he said in a final statement. “I’m leaving with love, peace and light.”
But Alabama Governor Kay Ivey said Smith had got what he deserved for the stabbing to death of Mrs Sennett, allegedly on the orders of her husband.
“After more than 30 years and attempt after attempt to game the system, Mr Smith has answered for his horrendous crimes,” she said. “I pray that Elizabeth Sennett’s family can receive closure after all these years dealing with that great loss.”
Mike Sennett said nothing could bring his mother back and the execution was “bittersweet”. While justice was served, he added: “We are not going to be jumping around, whooping and holler ‘Hooray’ and all that.”
Prosecutors said Smith and another man were each paid $1,000 to kill Mrs Sennett after her indebted husband sought to cash in on a life insurance policy. The husband, a preacher, killed himself when he became a suspect, and the other murderer was executed in 2010.
Smith was convicted in 1989 and Alabama tried to execute him by lethal injection in 2022, but prison officials failed to get the syringe into his vein.
The drugs used for such executions are proving harder to source, leading Alabama and two other states to approve the use of pure nitrogen gas administered through an air-tight mask to cause oxygen deprivation.
Alabama became the first place anywhere in the world to use the new execution method, after Smith lost a last-ditch appeal to the US Supreme Court that it breached a constitutional ban on “cruel and unusual” punishment.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who along with two other liberal justices dissented, wrote: "Having failed to kill Smith on its first attempt, Alabama has selected him as its `guinea pig' to test a method of execution never attempted before. The world is watching."
The majority justices did not issue any statements.
Asked about Smith’s shaking on the prison gurney, Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Q. Hamm said it appeared to be involuntary movement caused by nitrogen hypoxia. “Nothing was out of the ordinary from what we were expecting,” he said.
State Attorney General Steve Marshall said that nitrogen gas "was intended to be - and has now proved to be - an effective and humane method of execution".
But Smith’s spiritual adviser, Rev. Jeff Hood, said state officials had wrongly predicted that Smith would lose consciousness in seconds.
“What we saw was minutes of someone struggling for their life,” he said. “I stood there and cried as I saw someone get suffocated to death.”
