The state of Alabama (South of USA) executed the prisoner this Thursday Kenneth Eugene Smith asphyxiating him with nitrogen gas, a method never before tried, according to authorities.
Smith, sentenced to death for murdering a woman for hire in 1988, was pronounced dead at 8:25 p.m. local time (02:25 GMT on Friday) after having inhaled the nitrogen gas through a mask and having run out of oxygen.
His last words, already with the mask on, were: “Tonight Alabama makes humanity take a step back. Thanks for your support. I love you all”.
Journalists who were eyewitnesses to the execution reported that after the gas began to flow, Smith writhed for a couple of minutes and then was seen breathing heavily for several more minutes.
The director of Alabama Department of Corrections, John Hammsaid in a subsequent press conference that the inmate’s shaking was “involuntary”, but nothing out of what was expected.
The nitrogen gas flowed for about 15 minutes.
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He United States Supreme Court Minutes before the execution, he rejected the last appeal that the prisoner’s defense had presented this Thursday by 6 votes to 3, thus giving the green light to the start of the procedure.
The progressive magistrate Sonia Sotomayorone of the 3 who voted to stop the execution, argued that “having failed to kill Smith on his first attempt, Alabama has chosen him as his ‘guinea pig’ to test an execution method never used before”.
Since the Supreme Court reintroduced the death penalty in 1976, they have been executed in USA 1,583 prisoners, 73 of them in Alabama.
