Because there is a lack of medication, US states are looking for new methods of execution. After two judicial decisions, the murderer Kenneth Smith is now to be the first person in the USA to be killed using nitrogen. Nobody knows how painful dying will be.
Kenneth Eugene Smith was convicted in 1988 for the murder of Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett. The jury’s vote at that time was clear with 11 votes to 1: life without chance of release. The judge found the decision too lenient – and overruled it. Instead he ordered the death penalty.
Smith’s death sentence was scheduled to be carried out for the first time on November 17, 2022. First, a court briefly stopped the execution by lethal injection. Then it was not possible to create the two entrances necessary to administer the lethal medication and the execution had to be aborted.