A jury convicted Kenneth Eugene Smith of the 1988 murder-for-hire of Elizabeth Sennett. (Alabama Department of Corrections)
Alabama is on the verge of executing a person on death row by nitrogen suffocation, a method that has never been used on a human being.
Kenneth Eugene Smith, convicted of the 1988 murder-for-hire of Elizabeth Sennett, is scheduled to be executed sometime Thursday or early Friday under the new method.
Smith lost two separate appeals on Wednesday. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Smith’s attorneys that the inmate, who survived a botched execution in November 2022, could not be executed again without violating his Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday affirmed a lower court ruling allowing the execution to proceed. The divided three-judge panel ruled that the novel execution method would not violate his Eighth Amendment rights; that the Alabama Attorney General did not violate his due process rights by scheduling his execution and that the process would not violate his right to practice his religion.