A prisoner in the US becomes a guinea pig for a new kind of murder: quick to live – or already dead? Ramzan Kadyrov continues to pose puzzles

Kenneth Eugene Smith’s story is almost unbelievable. The American prisoner was initially sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and eventually ended up on death row. However, after thirty years behind bars, the officials responsible failed to carry out the first execution.

Now Smith was going to die anyway. By a method of murder of his own choosing, but never tested. Smith wants to suffocate from nitrogen hypoxia.

But from the beginning:

Kenneth Eugene Smith

Smith is a convicted murderer. In 1988 he committed a murder for hire together with a partner. The client was Charles Sennett, pastor of the Westside Church of Christ in Sheffield, Alabama. And the same Sennett wanted to get rid of his wife.

The pastor had debts, an extramarital affair and had taken out life insurance for his wife. His plan was to kill two birds with one stone with the contract killing: get rid of his debts and his wife. Through an intermediary, the pastor eventually hired Smith and a friend for $1,000 each. They ambushed the woman, brutally beat her and killed her with ten stab wounds.

Smith was tried in 1989 and 1996. Both times he was found guilty of murder. The jury sentenced him to life in prison without parole. Ultimately, however, a judge overturned the jury’s decision and sentenced him to death. (Alabama in 2017 only banned judges from overruling juries; it is now no longer allowed in the United States.)

Smith was convicted in 1989 and was scheduled to be executed on November 17, 2022, after more than 30 years behind bars. The execution was supposed to be by lethal injection, but that did not happen. According to a statement from Smith, he lay on a cot for four hours while officers tried to inject him with the poison intravenously, which did not work. He was pricked with needles again and again. His lawyers accused authorities of torturing Smith for hours during the execution attempt and subjecting him to the severe psychological torment of a mock execution, the Austrian press reported.

Smith denounced the method of execution and requested execution by nitrogen hypoxia. The Supreme Court agreed to this in May this year.

The new way of executing

Since 2018, people sentenced to death in Alabama can be executed for nitrogen hypoxia. The convict inhales pure nitrogen – In theory, she should become unconscious after a few breaths and die after a few minutes from lack of oxygen.

This method has not yet been used in Alabama, Mississippi or Oklahoma, where it has also been approved. Now it will be used, or rather tested, for the first time by Kenneth Eugene Smith.

This is what the opponents of the method say

Executing people through nitrogen hypoxia has not yet been attempted. Proponents of the method claim it is painless. Opponents are fundamentally against it and argue that experimenting with a method that has never been used before is a terrible idea.

Bernard Harcourt is a law professor at Columbia University and has extensive experience as an attorney for death row inmates in Alabama. He strongly criticizes the planned execution method, saying it is impossible to say whether death by nitrogen hypoxia is painless, Harcourt told the New York Times.

This has not yet been tested anywhere and executions are not carried out in hospitals with professionally trained medical staff, but in prisons, often in the middle of the night. The typical executioner is not a doctor, but simply works part-time. The psychological and emotional stress, including for prison staff, is enormous.

Even if, in theory, the executed quickly became unconscious and died, in practice too much could go wrong. If the mask does not fit properly and oxygen gets in, the person may gasp and choke. This can lead to serious brain damage and the perpetrator may survive. If the exhaled air were not properly removed, the person would suffocate from carbon dioxide. The nitrogen also poses a danger to other people in the room.

This killing method was previously used on pets to euthanize them. But This is now only recommended for chickens and turkeys, but not for mammals. Data would show that they could experience panic, pain and severe physical suffering.

Furthermore, authorities in Alabama are not competent enough to carry out such executions safely. Since 2018, nine executions in the United States have had complications, four of them in Alabama. Since 1946, convicts have survived execution attempts in six cases – three of them in Alabama, and all after 2018.

How it could continue

Smith’s lawyers could invoke the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. This would allow them to challenge the method of execution demanded by Smith himself.