A death row inmate is set to be killed later today using a method that’s never been tried on humans before.
Alabama inmate Kenneth Smith, now 58, was one of two men convicted of the murder-for-hire killing of a preacher’s wife Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett in 1988.
Smith and his friend, John Parker, were reportedly each paid $1,000 to conduct the murder.
Elizabeth was ambushed, punched, beaten, bludgeoned, and stabbed over and over again with a six-inch survival knife.
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She sustained a total of ten stab wounds — eight to her chest and two to her neck — which proved fatal.
Smith has survived the state’s prior attempt to execute him.
The Alabama Department of Corrections tried to give Smith a lethal injection in 2022, but called it off when authorities could not connect the two intravenous lines required to execute him.
Parker was executed via lethal injection in June 2010.
In 2023, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall filed a motion to use a new death penalty method of nitrogen hypoxia on Smith.
The use of nitrogen hypoxia is authorised by three states (Alabama, Oklahoma and Mississippi) but has never been used.
The method involves breathing in nitrogen through a respirator placed over the inmate's nose and mouth - killing them as a result of oxygen deprivation.
The state attorney's general office said during a December court hearing that the method would 'cause unconsciousness within seconds, and cause death within minutes'.
This comes after veterinary scientists in the US and Europe saying that nitrogen hypoxia is unacceptable for most small mammals other than pigs.
When Smith's execution was given the green light last week, it received backlash from the UN high commissioner for human rights in Geneva, who said 'suffocation by nitrogen gas' is classed as torture and is inhuman.
Smith's attorney also appealed against the decision and alleged that his client would be used as a 'test subject'.
And on 19 January, he claimed to the judges at the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals that the method was flawed and that the state would attempt 'to execute Kenny Smith under unprecedented circumstances'.
Smith's spiritual advisor, Dr Hood, also feared that he and other officials in the execution chamber could be putting themselves at risk too.
Talking about his upcoming execution, Smith told the Guardian: “I am not ready for that. Not in no kind of way. I’m just not ready, brother.”
He went on to say that he is still suffering severe trauma following his unsuccessful execution attempt in 2022.
“They haven’t given me a chance to heal,” he said. “I’m still suffering from the first execution and now we’re doing this again.
"They won’t let me even have post-traumatic stress disorder – you know, this is ongoing stress disorder.”
Claire Reid