Pablo Scarpellini Los Angeles

The Angels

Updated Friday, January 26, 2024-07:17

  • USA The US Supreme Court gives the green light to the first execution with nitrogen gas

  • USA Nazi gas and electric chairs: the "new" capital punishment of the United States

The second time was the charm.

Alabama

executed on Thursday afternoon

Kenneth Eugene Smith

, a man sentenced to death for the murder of a pastor's wife in March 1988. The southern state had already attempted to end the inmate's life in November 2022 by lethal injection. , but they gave up when they couldn't find the vein. Now they have achieved it by resorting to an innovative method of execution to add to the macabre list of existing systems:

nitrogen asphyxiation

.

Its execution lasted more than half an hour, 32 minutes, to be exact, from 7:53 pm when the process began, until 8:25 pm. As planned according to the previously announced protocol, Smith was placed in a tight-fitting mask so that he could inhale nitrogen until he was deprived of oxygen and lost his life. But it was not an instantaneous or rapid loss of consciousness, as state authorities had predicted. Smith,

58

, was conscious for several minutes as the gas invaded his lungs, according to eyewitnesses.

He then "shivered and writhed" for at least two minutes before beginning to breathe heavily. "This is the fifth execution I have witnessed in Alabama and I have never seen such a violent reaction to an execution," said one of the journalists present at the William C. Holman prison in Atmore, Alabama. Smith managed to say a few words before dying. "Tonight Alabama makes humanity take a step back. Thank you for supporting me. I love you all." Afterwards,

he said goodbye to his wife with "I love you

. "

This is the first execution of this type at the national level, a method that opens the door to future executions of its style and that has generated an enormous debate about the level of cruelty and pain that it can entail for the prisoner.

UN complaint

A state prosecutor told the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that it is "the most painless and humane method of execution known to man." Several medical experts, however, warned of the possibility that it was a "humiliating and painful" death, preceded by convulsions and even vomiting in the mask itself

, a practice that they have denounced in recent days from the United Nations

. The same prison had changed Smith's menu after he had been vomiting for days before being executed.

The introduction of nitrogen hypoxia does not respond to humanitarian or creative questions. States have long

had difficulty obtaining the drugs necessary to carry out lethal injection

, the most common method of execution in the 27 states where capital punishment is applied. In addition to the refusal of pharmaceutical companies to sell these drugs for reasons of ethics and image, the European Union vetoed the export of these drugs to the United States in 2011.

Hence,

Mississippi

and

Oklahoma

joined Alabama in giving the green light to gas asphyxiation. Despite the lack of precedents and the many doubts raised by the method of execution, neither the federal judges nor the Supreme Court were willing to listen to last-minute requests for clemency to stop the execution. Only the three progressive justices of the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, decided to postpone the prisoner's death. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall expressed confidence Wednesday that "justice would be done" and that the execution would take place.

Smith, 58 and sentenced to death in 1989, was one of three convicted in the 1988 death of 45-year-old

Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett

. Her husband paid Smith and another man $1,000 to murder Sennett with the idea of ​​collecting the life insurance and paying off her many debts. She was stabbed a dozen times. Smith was 22 years old when he committed the crime.

The pastor took his own life shortly after the murder of his wife.

John Forrest Parker

, another of those involved in the case, was executed by lethal injection in 2010 and the third,

Billy Gray Williams

, died behind bars in 2020 after being sentenced to life in prison.