Alabama would be carrying out the first execution by Nitrogen gas on Thursday to put Kenneth Smith to death for his role in a 1988 murder for hire.
Smith, who survived the state’s initial attempt to execute him by lethal injection in 2022 is set to die on Thursday. Some experts are concerned that the nitrogen gas would cause him excessive pain or torture him to his death.
“The eyes of the world are on this impending moral apocalypse,” the inmate and his spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeff Hood, said midday Thursday in a joint statement.
“Our prayer is that people will not turn their heads. We simply cannot normalize the suffocation of each other.”
The sons of the victim, Elizabeth Sennett, feel it’s time for Smith’s sentence to be carried out, telling CNN Thursday they believed their mother had been forgotten because of the new execution method.
“It seems like a lot of the focus today is on Smith and his nitrogen, whatever, process,” Mike Sennett said. “And that’s kind of upset us a little bit.”
“What’s going on is overshadowing what’s actually happened,” his brother, Chuck Sennett, said. “He’s gotta pay the price for what he done to our mother,” who should be remembered “as a loving, caring woman.”
The method involves replacing the air breathed by an inmate with 100% nitrogen, depriving the body of oxygen.
“It’s lunacy, absolute lunacy,” said Smith’s spiritual adviser, who will be in the execution chamber when the inmate is put to death.
