The Alabama Execution Case: What We Know

The first execution took place in Alabama on Thursday Nitrogen gas in the United States, an untested method that was debated before it was used.

The inmate, Kenneth Smith, was pronounced dead at 8:25 pm central time at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, after the U.S. Supreme Court will deny remedy to suspend execution.

These are some things to know about the case.

Who was Kenneth Smith and what was his crime?

Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, was one of three men convicted in the stabbing murder of Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett, 45, whose husband, a pastor, recruited them to kill her in March 1988 in Colbert County, Alabama.

According to court documents, Sennett, a mother of two, was stabbed 10 times during the attack by Smith and another man.

Charles Sennett Sr., husband of Elizabeth Sennett, had recruited a man to handle her murder, who in turn recruited Smith and another man.

According to court documents, Charles Sennett staged the murder in part to collect on an insurance policy he had taken out against his wife.

He had promised it to men $1,000 each for the murder.

What circumstances accompanied his death sentence?

Smith was convicted in 1996.

During sentencing, 11 of the 12 jurors voted to spare his life and sentence him to life in prison, but the judge in the case, N. Pride Tompkins, decided cancel your decision and sentenced him to death.

In 2017, Alabama stopped allowing judges to overrule juries that sentence death sentences in this way, and these types of sentences are no longer allowed anywhere in the United States.

Smith, who was 22 at the time of the crime, had said he didn’t think it was right for the judge to overturn the jury’s verdict in his case.

In a statement, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey had said that although Alabama had made a changeor “necessary” To prevent judges from overturning juries’ recommendations, lawmakers had chosen not to make the law retroactive to respect the sentences already handed down and the victims’ families who trusted that justice would be done.

What happened to Elizabeth Sennett’s husband and the others?

Charles Sennett committed suicide shortly after his wife’s murder.

One of the other men involved in the murder, John Forrest Parker, was executed by lethal injection in 2010, and another, Billy Gray Williams, was sentenced to life sentence and died behind bars in 2020.

The state had previously attempted to execute Smith. What happened?

In November 2022, the state attempted to execute Smith by lethal injection.

But that night, a team of corrections workers tried to insert an IV into Smith’s arms and hands and, eventually, into a vein near his heart, but failed.

Finally, after multiple attemptsprison officials decided they had no time to carry out the execution before the execution order expired at midnight.

What is known about this nitrogen method?

The method, known as nitrogen hypoxia, has been used in assisted suicides in Europe. Smith was placed in a mask and given a stream of nitrogen gas that deprived him of oxygen until he died.

Lawyers for the state argued that death occurred nitrogen hypoxia It is painless and loss of consciousness occurs within a few seconds, followed by the heart stopping.

They also noted that Smith and his own lawyers considered the method valid preferable to the problematic practice of lethal injection in the State.

But before the execution, Smith’s lawyers argued that Alabama was not adequately prepared to carry it out and that a mask – rather than a bag or other wrapping – could have allowed in enough oxygen to prolong the process and cause suffering.

On Thursday, Alabama officials said the trial had concluded effective and humane.

Smith appeared conscious for several minutes after nitrogen gas began entering his mask, according to a report from Alabama journalists who witnessed the execution.

Next, “he was trembling and writhingió” before breathing heavily for several minutes. Eventually, his breathing slowed and stopped.

What was the position of the victim’s family?

“Some of those people out there say, ‘Well, he doesn’t need to suffer like this,’” Charles Sennett Jr, one of Elizabeth Sennett’s sons, told local station WAAY31 this month.

“Well, he didn’t ask Mom how to grieve. They just did. They stabbed her several times.”

Another son, Michael Sennett, told NBC News in December that he was frustrated that the state had done so it took so long in carrying out an execution ordered by the judge decades ago.

“I don’t care how he gets out, as long as he gets out,” he said, noting that Smith had been in prison “twice as long as I knew my mother.”

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