This method had never been used. The US state of Alabama executed a convict by nitrogen inhalation, Thursday, a world first denounced by the UN which compared this method of execution to a form of “torture”. The execution of Kenneth Smith, definitively convicted in 1996 for the murder of a woman ordered by her husband, is the first of the year in the United States, where 24 were carried out in 2023, all by lethal injection.
The period set by the authorities of this state in the south-east of the country to carry out the execution opened on Thursday at 06:00 GMT and will close on Friday at 12:00 GMT. If it goes ahead as planned, it will be the first time in more than 40 years that a new method of execution has been used in the United States.
A previous attempt by lethal injection, on November 17, 2022, was canceled at the last minute, the intravenous infusions to administer the lethal solution to Kenneth Eugene Smith not having been able to be placed within the legally allotted time, although he remained attached for several hours.
“New and untested execution mode”
Alabama is one of three US states authorizing execution by nitrogen inhalation, in which death is caused by hypoxia (depletion of oxygen). The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said on January 16 that it was “alarmed” by the use of a “new and untested method of execution, hypoxia in the nitrogen”.
This “could constitute torture or other cruel or degrading treatment under international law,” warned a spokesperson for the High Commission, Ravina Shamdasani, calling for a stay of this execution.
Alabama’s nitrogen hypoxia execution protocol does not provide for sedation, while the American Veterinary Association (AVMA) recommends administering a sedative to animals euthanized this way, the spokesperson noted. , faced with the risk of pain.
“Completely experimental”
All appeals and requests for a stay by Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, have been rejected, including by the Supreme Court. In its written arguments to the Supreme Court, the State of Alabama even went so far as to present nitrogen hypoxia as “perhaps the most humane method of execution ever invented.”
“The Alabama authorities missed three executions in a row in 2022, including that of Mr. Smith,” underlined the executive director of the specialized observatory Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), Robin Maher.
“Maybe they feel more comfortable moving to a completely different mode of execution, even if it’s completely experimental and has never been tested,” he continued in an interview with the ‘AFP.
“I’m still traumatized by the last time,” Kenneth Eugene Smith told NPR public radio in December, admitting he was “absolutely terrified” of reliving an attempted execution.
Disavowed jurors
He was convicted of the 1988 murder of Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett, 45, ordered by her husband, Charles Sennett, a heavily indebted and unfaithful pastor, to make it appear as a burglary gone wrong.
Despite the husband’s suicide, the police traced the two murderers. Kenneth Eugene Smith’s accomplice, John Forrest Parker, sentenced to death, was executed in 2010.
Kenneth Smith was also sentenced to the death penalty for the first time but the trial was overturned on appeal. During his second trial in 1996, 11 of the 12 jurors favored a life sentence.
But as at the trial of his accomplice, the judge ignored the opinion of the jurors and sentenced him to the death penalty, a possibility existing at the time in a few states but now abolished throughout the United States.
In its annual report in December, the DPIC specified that most of the prisoners executed in 2023 in the United States “would probably not be sentenced to death today”, due in particular to the consideration of mental health problems and trauma. defendants or legislative changes to impose the death penalty. The death penalty has been abolished in 23 American states, while six others observe a moratorium on its application by decision of the governor.