58-year-old Kenneth Eugene Smith was sentenced to the death penalty for killing Elizabeth Sennett. He is now going to become the first person ever to face a nitrogen execution. The US Supreme Court declined to block what Kenneth’s lawyers call a “cruel and unusual punishment”.
The way that this will work is by strapping a mask into the face of the inmate and pumping nitrogen into the victim. Nitrogen executions probably won’t become a new normal way of executing inmates, since it causes unnecessary suffering and a leak could cause harm to the people carrying out the execution. Breathing pure nitrogen without oxygen causes the cells to break down and leads to death. Alabama said in a court filing that they expected him to lose consciousness within seconds and die in a matter of minutes. Many medical professionals denounce this method though, they stated that “it could cause a range of catastrophic mishaps, ranging from violent convulsions to survival in a vegetative state.”
Lawyers for the inmate, who has been on death row since 1996 pled for another appeal to the nation’s top court in the hope of a last-minute reprieve which was not given. The execution will take place on Wednesday at 10:00 PM PST.
