After Alabama’s unprecedented execution of death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith using nitrogen gas on Thursday, state officials were quick to credit themselves with a landmark victory.
‘Alabama has achieved something historic,’ said Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall moments after Smith was pronounced dead at around 8.25pm. ‘Our proven method offers a blueprint for other states.’
But family members and journalists who witnessed the execution have vehemently challenged that claim.
Instead, they describe how Smith spent almost half of the 22-minute execution lurching backwards and forwards in pain and insisted the method must never be used again.
‘Tonight, I watched my husband jerk and convulse and gasp for air for at least 10 minutes,’ Smith’s wife, Deanne, told reporters during a press conference shortly after Smith was pronounced dead.
Attorney General of Alabama Steve Marshall, pictured here in 2022, has claimed that the execution was a success
‘Tonight, I watched my husband jerk and convulse and gasp for air for at least 10 minutes,’ Smith’s wife, Deanne, told reporters during a press conference on Thursday
Kenneth Eugene Smith was convicted of killing Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett, the wife of a pastor, for payment of about $1,000. She was beaten and stabbed
Sennett was found dead in her home March 18, 1988, with eight stab wounds in the chest and one on each side of her neck. She’s pictured here with her husband, Charles, who orchestrated the killing
‘We say we’re a country that believes in the Constitution, and I’m sorry but I just don’t see that,’ she added.
Smith was convicted of killing Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett, the wife of a pastor, for payment of about $1,000. She was beaten and stabbed at least a eight times times in the neck and head.
Her husband had fallen into death and orchestrated the murder of his wife so that he could collect life insurance money.
Smith spent more than three decades on death row after being convicted for the murder of Sennett in 1988. Sennet, who was the wife of a pastor, was found stabbed and beaten.
Lending credence to his wife’s claim that the execution on Thursday may not have gone to plan was an acknowledgement by Marshall that Smith actively holding his breath may have prolonged the process.
Last month, court documents filed by the attorney general’s office suggested he would be killed ‘within seconds’.
Smith’s spiritual advisor, Jeff Hood, was another witness.
‘I think that anybody that witnessed this knows we didn’t see someone go unconscious in two or three seconds,’ he said. ‘What we saw was minutes of someone struggling for their life.’
‘This is not what they thought was going to happen,’ he added.
‘I think that anybody that witnessed this knows we didn’t see someone go unconscious in two or three seconds,’ he said. ‘What we saw was minutes of someone struggling for their life,’ Smith’s spiritual advisor Jeff Hood said
In the hours before the execution, the Supreme Court denied a last minute appeal for a stay on the grounds the untested method might result in a ‘cruel or unusual punishment’, prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.
Three liberal justices did however dissent, including Obama appointee Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who described it as an ‘experiment with human life’.
Since the method was first written into Alabama law in 2018, huge uncertainty has prevailed around how it would work – and whether it would be as ‘humane’ as officials insisted.
But by patching together a variety of statements from those that witnessed Smith’s execution first hand, much more about the apparatus and methodology is now known.
‘It was like a firefighters mask that covered from the top of his forehead to under the chin. It was strapped down as hard as it seemed they could really get it,’ said Hood.
That was corroborated by another witness, Alabama Alabama-based journalist Lee Hedgepeth.
They both described how the straps that fastened the mask to Smith’s face were also attached to the gurney, preventing him from moving his head at all.
‘He was wrapped in a white sheet from about his neck down to his feet,’ said Hedgepeth. ‘The mask was secured tightly to his head and appeared to be tied in some way to the gurney.’
He described how within minutes, Smith started to violently push against the strap and was able to move his head back and forth violently.
‘This was the fifth execution that I’ve witnessed in Alabama and I have never seen such a violent reaction to an execution, said Hedgepeth.
One reporter to have watched the execution indicated the way Smith’s execution was performed did not resemble the official procedure outlined in a protocol released by the Alabama Department of Corrections last year.
‘The protocol kind of went out the window,’ said Hood. What they told us in the protocol was going to happen… none of that happened.’