USA - Kenneth Smith (AL)

USA - Alabama. Dissent rises against looming ‘experimental’ execution of Kenneth Smith

January 23, 2024:

January 23, 2024 - Alabama. Dissent rises against looming ‘experimental’ execution----Barring successful appeals or an unlikely clemency from a Republican governor, Kenneth Eugene Smith is scheduled to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia Jan. 25.
As Alabama death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith inches closer to his Jan. 25 execution date — potentially becoming the first condemned person ever to die by nitrogen hypoxia — demonstrators met on the steps of the state Capitol on Tuesday to urge Governor Kay Ivey to reconsider.
Barring a favorable ruling on pending appeals in both the U.S. Supreme Court and 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, only Ivey can grant Smith clemency. But despite pleas of leniency from both state and national leaders, the Department of Corrections has indicated the execution will proceed as scheduled.
“My message today is to call on state legislators and leaders in government to set the example and stop this,” said Ron Wright, a former death row inmate in Florida who in 2017 became the 27th of 30 people exonerated there. “It’s a simple process of realizing that capital punishment serves no purpose. What changes after this man’s life is taken? Do we find the mysterious closure? Do we wake up the next morning and smell the coffee? Do we sleep better at night? How are we safer after taking someone’s life?”
Smith was convicted in 1996 in the 1988 murder-for-hire stabbing death of Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett. Although a jury recommended a life sentence for Smith by a vote of 11-1, the trial judge handed down the death penalty in a practice known as judicial override which has since been outlawed in the state.
Thursday will be the 2nd time the state has attempted to execute Smith. In November 2022, he was strapped to a gurney in the execution chamber for more than an hour while state officials tried and failed to find a vein to administer deadly IV drugs. Afterward, he advocated for his own execution by nitrogen hypoxia, and the state created a new protocol for administering it.
During a hearing for an emergency injunction Jan. 19, attorneys for both parties argued over the protocol’s effectiveness and the possibility it will leave Smith severely injured rather than dead. Alabama Solicitor General Edmund LaCour referred to it as “the most humane method of execution ever devised.”
But Bernard Simelton, a member of the national committee of the NAACP, noted at Tuesday’s demonstration the United Nations commissioner for human rights recently warned Smith’s execution “could amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment under international human rights law.”
“This is a sad day for the state of Alabama,” Simelton said. “We ask Governor Ivey to have a last-minute change of heart and do the right thing and halt this execution. The state does not understand the horror that this individual will go through. This is an experiment and we do not experiment on people.”
As Smith’s spiritual adviser, Rev. Jeff Hood will be with Smith in the execution chamber. Hood said Tuesday the state has made no guarantees about his own safety.
“I have no idea what I am walking into,” he said, adding the state has not told him whether his own ambient air will be safe to breathe as he administers last rites and prays with Smith. “We’ve got a state that has horribly botched 3 executions in recent years and these are supposed to be the same people who will be successful at the first experimental, novel nitrogen hypoxia execution?”
Hood said Smith has accepted his guilt and his punishment, yet remains fearful of the method. He also questions whether the death penalty is a deterrent.
“I think it's clear for everybody that you can't stop murder with murder. You cant stop stealing with stealing, you can’t stop rape with rape. But it don’t seem so obvious for those who inhabit that building," Hood said, pointing to the Capitol.
T.J. Riggs, Alabama state death penalty abolition coordinator for Amnesty International USA, said “the death penalty no matter the method is inhumane and it is cruel.”
“We believe the execution of Kenny Smith is particularly unjust because of issues like judicial override and we are calling on Governor Ivey to grant clemency,” he said.
There is a 30-hour time frame for Smith’s execution which expires at 6 a.m. on Jan, 26. Based on testimony and portions of the protocol which have been publicly released, Smith will be shackled and outfitted with a respirator-type mask. If his legal appeals are exhausted and he is not granted clemency, a state official will turn a valve to administer nitrogen to Smith at a rate of between 50 and 70 liters per minute, which should render him unconscious within 40 seconds and should result in death within 15 minutes.

https://www.courthousenews.com/dissent-rises-against-looming-experimental-execution/