The state of Alabama will execute an inmate using a gas chamber in January, the first time such a method will be used in decades for execution in the United States.
Kenneth Eugene Smith was convicted in 1988 of murdering Elizabeth Sennett as part of a murder-for-hire scheme ordered by her husband, Pastor Charles Sennett, according to NBC News. After an attempt to execute him by lethal injection in November 2022 failed due to the absence of a suitable vein, the state announced that it would execute him by use of a gas chamber, where he would die by inhalation of nitrogen hypoxia amid a lack of oxygen, with such a method being employed for the first time in the state’s history. (RELATED: Ron DeSantis Signs Bill Making It Easier To Execute Criminals)
“The fact that they’ve got me lined up to be the first with gas is really terrifying,” Smith told NBC News via telephone from prison. “Yeah, it’s surreal to be in this position.”
24 people have been executed across 5 states in the USA in 2023.
This is 24 too many.
We will continue to fight for equal access to justice on death row, helping those affected by the death penalty.
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— Amicus (@Amicus_ALJ) December 22, 2023
Nitrogen hypoxia was first approved by Alabama for executions in 2018, joining the states of Oklahoma and Mississippi, though neither has ever employed the method to execute death row inmates, NBC reported. A gas chamber was last used for an execution in the United States in 1999, where German national Walter LaGrand was executed by state authorities in Arizona.
“I mean, you can’t really test it on nobody, but I just hope they get it right this time,” said Michael Sennett, the son of Elizabeth Sennett, who supports Smith’s execution, to NBC News. “It doesn’t matter to me how he goes out, so long as he goes.”
Smith has told reporters that he does not know the protocol for his execution, though his lawyers and medical team toured the gas chamber where he will die earlier in December. His spiritual adviser, Reverend Jeff Hood, meanwhile, filed a lawsuit against the state challenging the procedure on First Amendment grounds, claiming that the gas chamber’s prevention of his presence within three feet of Smith violates his religious liberty.
Some physicians have expressed concerns about the use of gas, which may threaten others witnessing the execution. Joel Zivot, an anesthesiologist and intensive care physician at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, told NBC News that “[t]here is no room for error … gas will go wherever it wants to go, wherever there are places for it to go.”
Smith and two other persons were paid $1,000 by Charles Sennett to kill his wife, Elizabeth, so he could collect a life insurance policy in her name, and she was stabbed and beaten to death in her home, NBC reported. In 1996, he was sentenced to death by the trial judge in his case, even as the jury voted 11-1 to impose a life sentence.
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