For the first time, someone has been executed by nitrogen gas in Alabama in the United States. This is reported by the AP news agency. It was 58-year-old convicted murderer Kenneth Eugene Smith.
Smith’s attorneys had objected to the new form of execution, arguing that Alabama is using Smith as a test subject. On Thursday, the US Supreme Court ruled that the execution could go ahead. An attempt was made in 2022 to carry out the death penalty imposed on Smith, but it was canceled at the last minute because it was not possible to place the IV for the lethal injection in Smith.
Smith was executed in a prison in southern Alabama. It was the first time a new execution method had been used since the introduction of lethal injection four decades ago.
‘Guinea pig’
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined two other liberal justices in dissenting from the decision. In a statement, she wrote that Smith is being used by Alabama as a “guinea pig, chosen to test an execution method never before attempted. The world is watching.”
After the court ruled that his execution could go ahead, Smith said in a statement that the eyes of the world are focused on “this impending moral apocalypse. We simply cannot normalize the suffocation of each other.”