Alabama Carries Out First US Execution by Asphyxiation with Nitrogen Gas

Officials said 58-year-old Smith was pronounced dead at 8:25 pm on Thursday (02:25 GMT on Friday) at Holman Correctional Facility in Alabama after breathing pure nitrogen gas through a face mask to cause oxygen deprivation.

His death marks the first time that a new execution method has been used in the United States since lethal injection, now the most commonly used method, was introduced in 1982.

Alabama has called its new protocol “the most painless and humane method of execution known to man”.

The last US execution using gas was in 1999 when a convicted murderer was put to death using hydrogen cyanide gas.

Alabama is one of three US states that have approved the use of nitrogen hypoxia as a method of execution, along with Oklahoma and Mississippi.

Smith’s execution took about 22 minutes, and he appeared to shake and writhe on the gurney, sometimes pulling against the restraints, for a couple of minutes, according to the Associated Press news agency. That was followed by several minutes of heavy breathing until breathing was no longer perceptible.

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey said the execution was justice for the murder-for-hire killing of 45-year-old Elizabeth Sennett in March 1988, Al Jazeera reported.

Sennett was found dead in her home with eight stab wounds in the chest and one on each side of her neck. Smith was one of two men convicted in the killing. The other, John Forrest Parker, was executed in 2010.

Prosecutors said the men were each paid $1,000 to kill Sennett on behalf of her pastor husband, who was deeply in debt and wanted to collect on the insurance. The husband, Charles Sennett Sr, killed himself when the investigation focused on him as a suspect, according to court documents.

There were 24 executions in the United States in 2023, all of them carried out by lethal injection.