MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama, unless blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court, will attempt to put an inmate to death with nitrogen gas on Thursday night, a never before used execution method that the state claims will be humane but critics call cruel and experimental.
Kenneth Eugene Smith, a 58-year-old convicted killer whose 2022 lethal injection was called off at the last minute because authorities couldn’t connect an IV line, is scheduled to be executed at a south Alabama prison.
Alabama plans to put a respirator mask over Smith’s face and replace his breathing air with pure nitrogen gas, causing him to die from lack of oxygen. The execution will be the first attempt to use a new execution method since the 1982 introduction of lethal injection, now the most common execution method in the United States.
“It’s terrifying, This is a situation where we have absolutely no idea what we are walking into,” the Rev. Jeff Hood, Smith’s spiritual adviser and a death penalty opponent, said Thursday morning.
Smith’s attorneys on Thursday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution to review claims that the new method violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment and deserves more legal scrutiny before it is used on a person.