Skip to content Skip to footer

After SCOTUS Rejected His Final Appeal, Alabama Executes Man With Nitrogen Gas

“Tonight, Alabama caused humanity to take a step backwards,” Kenneth Smith said in his final statement.

A protester holds a sign that reads "Execute Justice Not People!" as he participates in a vigil against the death penalty in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 29, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

Alabama on Thursday night became the first U.S. state to execute a person using nitrogen gas, killing 58-year-old Kenneth Smith by depriving his body of oxygen after the nation’s Supreme Court rejected his legal team’s last-ditch appeal.

The state’s notoriously incompetent executioners, who tried and failed to kill Smith via lethal injection in 2022, strapped the condemned man to a gurney and administered the nitrogen gas through a full-face mask. Smith was pronounced dead shortly before 8:30 pm after around four minutes of convulsions.

“Tonight, Alabama caused humanity to take a step backwards,” Smith said in his final statement. “I’m leaving with love, peace, and light. Thank you for supporting me, love all of you.”

Smith was first convicted and sentenced to death in 1989 for the murder-for-hire killing of Elizabeth Sennett in 1988, a crime committed when he was 22 years old. That conviction was overturned, but he was convicted again seven years later, with the jury recommending a life sentence.

An Alabama judge, N. Pride Tompkins, then did something that used to be relatively common in the state but was banned in 2017: He overrode the jury, sentencing Smith to death.

Alabama’s decision to kill Smith by flooding his lungs with nitrogen — a method that veterinarians consider unethical for euthanizing animals — drew global condemnation, with United Nations experts warning the execution would likely violate both U.S. and international laws against torture.

“I deeply regret the execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith in Alabama despite serious concerns this novel and untested method of suffocation by nitrogen gas may amount to torture, or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment,” Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement.

“The death penalty is inconsistent with the fundamental right to life,” he continued. “I urge all states to put in place a moratorium on its use, as a step towards universal abolition.”

Earlier this week, Alabama residents gathered outside the state’s Capitol building in Montgomery to protest the planned execution of Smith. One demonstrator held a sign that read, “Say no to the gas chamber!”

Capital punishment has been declining in popularity in the U.S. for decades, but states like Alabama and Oklahoma have continued executing inmates even as pharmaceutical companies and equipment manufacturers have made it increasingly difficult to obtain materials necessary for lethal injections. The Trump administration worked for years to build a “secret supply chain” for lethal-injection drugs before its 2020 execution spree.

Three U.S. Supreme Court justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Elena Kagan — dissented from the decision to reject the final attempt to halt Smith’s execution.

“Smith is the first person in this country ever to be executed this way,” Sotomayor wrote. “The details are hazy because Alabama released its heavily redacted protocol under five months ago. What Smith knows is that he will be strapped to a gurney. He will wear a nitrogen-supplying, off-the-rack mask for which the state has not fitted him or even tried on him.”

“Having failed to kill Smith on its first attempt, Alabama has selected him as its ‘guinea pig’ to test a method of execution never attempted before,” the justice added. “The world is watching. This court yet again permits Alabama to ‘experiment… with a human life,’ while depriving Smith of ‘meaningful discovery’ on meritorious constitutional claims.”

President Joe Biden vowed to work toward abolition of the death penalty at the federal level during his 2020 campaign, but advocates say he has done virtually nothing to fulfill that pledge. The Biden Justice Department has continued to seek the death penalty in select cases and fight efforts to reverse death sentences.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), the lead House sponsor of legislation that would end the federal death penalty, called Smith’s execution “absolutely unconscionable.”

“We must work to abolish the death penalty and end this cruel and inhumane punishment,” Pressley wrote on social media.

Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn

Dear Truthout Community,

If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.

We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.

Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.

There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.

Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?

It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.

We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.

We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.

Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.

We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.

With love, rage, and solidarity,

Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy