Today, the state of Alabama will try again to kill Kenneth Eugene Smith. In one of the most bizarre capital punishment cases in the country, the state previously botched an execution of Smith. Everything about the case has been legally irregular in the effort to execute this convicted assassin.
Smith, 58, was convicted in a murder-for-hire case involving the brutal beating and stabbing of Elizabeth Sennett, 45, in 1988. Yet, the jury decided to give him life in prison rather than the death penalty. That was then overruled by the judge who sentenced him to death.
He has remained on death row since 1996. His appeals finally ran out in November 2022 and Alabama attempted to execute him. However, the staff could not find a good vein to use for the intravenous lines. It took so much time that the warrant period expired.
Smith then added a new wrinkle. He demanded death by nitrogen gas, the first such execution in history. That required years of approval of an new regimen and authority. When it was finally approved, Smith then objected to the use of nitrogen gas. The district court rejected the effort.
In that order, U.S. District Judge Austin Huffaker found that Smith was gaming the system through bait-and-switches:
“Now that Alabama is prepared to carry out his sentence using the method of execution he has consistently declared he prefers, the circumstances have changed. And what was once highly unlikely is now a certainty. With that change, Smith now seeks to enjoin the Defendants from carrying out his death sentence using the Protocol, arguing it unconstitutionally superadds pain such that the court should order the Defendants to amend it or execute him by firing squad, a ‘relatively uncommon and archaic’ method.”
In his denied petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, Smith focused on the cruel aspects of successive execution attempts — a process that was even more uncertain and stressful with the use of “a novel method of execution that has never been attempted by any state or the federal government.”
It failed after a petition to Justice Clarence Thomas. Kenneth Smith is now scheduled for execution today by his previously chosen method of execution.
If America imposes Drawing and Quartering, crime will decrease.
It’s not the punishment, but the quick application of the punishment that deters crime. Executing someone 20 years after the crime is not a deterrent.
Death by nitrogen gas is nothing more than asphyxiation by oxygen deprivation. Our atmosphere is approximately 85% nitrogen and 12% oxygen, the other 3% consisting of various industrial gases too numerous and in such minimal and inconsequential proportions to list in a comment. Similar results (death) can be achieved by simply locking the intended subject in an air tight room until the re -inhaled air no longer supports life, mission accomplished. I personally would prefer an immediate heart stoppage, sans electrocution or firing squad, but this fool deserves as much consideration as he gave his victim.
@Anon.
Wrong.
Much quicker, and less painless.
You’re replacing the O2 w nitrogen so its not even noticeable.
There are accidental deaths where people walk into a room filled w nitrogen and just drop.
(You just black out first.)
Your body never knew what hit it.
Much less pain than anything else.
There is probably some anxiety because you know its coming but not when.
So give them an anti-anxiety drug before you strap them in.
Also easier for the people who have to witness the execution.
Nitrogen hypoxia is going to be no different than running out of oxygen climbing Mt. Everest, or your airplane springing a leak and depressurizing at 30K feet. He’ll pass out within 30 seconds without pain, maybe just a few seconds of mental confusion over what is happening around him. It’s ignorance of chemistry and/or dissembling to whine about others in the room being in danger.
I would prefer the condemned is forced to stand during execution. It better signals a posture of being held accountable than laying down on a gurney, which has a medical connotation. Public hangings were theatrical events, striking fear into the hearts of every non-psychopathic person, especially children.
Why not put him in a small gas chamber in a standing position, then “pssssssst”?
“Public hangings were theatrical events, striking fear into the hearts of every non-psychopathic person, especially children.”
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Not so much. Records suggest that executions were entertainment with crowds, with vendors selling treats, and with pickpockets. People seemed to enjoy them. Madam Defarge was a fictional character but she was based on real people.
Isn’t your description consistent with a theatrical event? Including one that strikes fear into people? I mean horror movies are theatrical events, but people are entertained by them.
Oldman, my comment wasn’t to imply that the public executions weren’t theatrical events but that they mainly struck fear into the hearts of people. I think they may have been made nonpublic in part because the enjoyment outweighed the fear by a wide margin.
Samuel Pepys [author of the famous diary] wrote of joining the crowds to watch the beheading of Charles I and years later being in the crowd watching the grisly execution [hanging, drawing and quartering] of some of the men responsible for the death of the king.
Bring back the guillotine. It is fast and quick. It also might provide the head a short time for an inaudible reply.
S. Meyer,
Oddly, many of the most dedicated users of the guillotine were terrified of it.
Jacques Hebert loved it and lamented that the Queen didn’t look freighted enough when she was executed. He was a sadistic, evil man.
When Hebert’s turn came he screamed in the tumbril and fainted several times on the way. He kept up the screaming and struggling on the gallows so the executioner decided to have some fun by sticking a brake into the machine. The first time the blade came down the blade stopped just inches from his neck and he kept screaming. The crowd had a good laugh. The second time the blade came down it stopped short of cutting off his head again. I think the third time he was still yelling, but enough is enough and finally the blade made it all the way through.
The Germans had a guillotine–an ugly steel thing, like something in a shop–and it likely saw more use in the 20th Century than the French National Razor did.
It worked for Gary Gilmore in 77′
Non-human animals are put down every day without a problem. Why is it so difficult to put down human animals?
So a condemned man has the authority to tell the state the method of execution he prefers? And he can choose one that is new and will cost the state years of time and a large expense to develop – and the state has to obey? Wow.
So he could have said: I choose to be executed by being pummeled with rocks from Mars. Then in 50 years when rocks are brought back from Mars, his execution can proceed.
I’d have to go with execution by nuclear explosion.
Send him to the neighborhood Planned Parenthood (PP) corporate office, where they employ UN Human Rights Council approved methods to abort social “burdens”. Why are they wasting capital to develop redundant resources for planned prisonerhood (PP)?
Carbon monoxide is tasteless, odorless and lethal. Many killed by it are unaware that anything is amiss. That is why we have carbon monoxide detectors in homes. In the early Seventies 91 men were killed by carbon monoxide in a single day in an Idaho mine. Concentration of the gas was so high in some areas that it was thought that only two breaths would kill you and you wouldn’t know you were taking the second breath. It would work quickly and painlessly with this guy.
By contrast, nitrogen, also tasteless and odorless, is not a poison and makes up close to 80% of every breath we take. Killing with nitrogen is suffocation and not much different from putting a pillow over his face. Another comment here is correct: any vet could do this faster and with no pain.
This seems like a bizarre and unnecessary experiment when there are clear alternatives.
Rising CO2 levels are what lead to discomfort in suffocation. The body can detect rising C02 but it doesn’t detect absence of oxygen. Therefore lack of oxygen, as in nitrogen asphyxiation, should not cause distress. Two or three breaths of a super nitrogen atmosphere should lead to sudden and painless unconsciousness quickly followed by death. It sounds a better bet than amateurs fooling around with injections.
The body can detect rising C02 but it doesn’t detect absence of oxygen
Me thinks you have hypoxia given the comment you authored
Vascular carotid bodies, aortic bodies, peripheral chemoreceptor cells, erythropoietin-producing cells, pulmonary artery smooth muscle cells, vascular cells particularly endothelium, mitochondria vis a vis electron transport chain and oxidative phosphorylation various complexes, exercising vigorously like bodybuilding can shift aerobic biochemical pathways to anaerobic biochemical pathways (i.e. metabolism), hypoxia is mediated via an oxygen-sensitive genetic transcription factor, HIF-1, which activates via epigenetic mechanisms DNA sequences to produce proteins involved in
redox biochemical processes, and on and on and on
Gourine AV, Funk GD. On the existence of a central respiratory oxygen sensor. J Appl Physiol (1985). 2017 Nov 1;123(5):1344-1349. doi: 10.1152/japplphysiol.00194.2017.
Estovir,
Regarding body awareness of oxygen deprivation it is common for people exposed to lower [but still dangerous] levels of carbon monoxide to experience brain fog and headache and general unease. That happened with my neighbor whose space heater in an RV was producing the gas. She awoke in the middle of the night with a sense of something being wrong and recognized her headache and brain fog as symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning. She dragged her two unconscious children outside and into fresh air where they quickly revived. A bit higher levels of carbon monoxide and they would all have died by morning.
You make some good points.
Thanks.
Anon: “Two or three breaths of a super nitrogen atmosphere should lead to sudden and painless unconsciousness quickly followed by death.”
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True, but it is the “should” in that sentence that makes this an experiment.
Carbon monoxide basically kills the same way, by oxygen deprivation. The molecule hogs space on hemoglobin where oxygen would normally go. But it is already known to kill gently when not mixed with actual smoke. instead of “should” kill one can safely say that carbon monoxide “will” kill quickly and painlessly. It is not an experiment.
The other foolish, expensive and unnecessary experiment in this instance is the legal one. Choosing this untried method almost inevitably sets up a potentially lengthy and costly legal battle that could have been avoided.
Oxygen deprivation leads the body to attempt to correct the problem, but the body’s reaction to it isn’t that strong. It is strong with elevations of CO2. Then again, some with Covid get happy hypoxia with their low oxygen counts.
S. Meyer,
Good points. Sometimes happens with mountain climbers and pilots going high without oxygen, impaired but content, even euphoric, and unaware of their peril. Sometimes similar with seniors and dehydration.
Carbon monoxide is tasteless, odorless and lethal. It would work quickly and painlessly with this guy. By contrast, nitrogen, also tasteless and odorless, is not a poison and makes up close to 80% of every breath we take. You have the relative lethality of the two reversed, and neither is a poison. Carbon monoxide binds to hemoglobin just like oxygen except it has a greater affinity to hemoglobin than oxygen, taking up it’s ability to carry oxygen. It takes time for that binding to hemoglobin to be complete to the point there is no free hemoglobin available to transport oxygen. Nitrogen does essentially the same thing in that breathing stops and profusion of the brain with oxygen ceases when inhaling pure oxygen causes the partial pressure of oxygen in the bloodstream to fall to nothing. One or two breaths of pure nitrogen will lead to unconsciousness; the complete absence of oxygen in the circulation to the brain would lead to brain death within minutes. The mechanism would be the same with any inert gas that completely eliminates oxygen in the atmosphere being inhaled.
We use entenox – a 50/50 mix of nitrogen and oxygen (laughing gas) – as an analgesic on ambulances, women giving birth, and by dentists for patients who don’t want conventional pain relief. Due to issues such as nitrogen and oxygen separating out in stationary tanks, in the cold, etc and the resulting danger of a patient inadvertently breathing pure nitrogen, nitrogen is self administered through a bite block demand regulator, or a medical professional is tasked with monitoring the patient’s respiration.
My guess is that these states probably got the idea of nitrogen executions from knowing that nitrogen is/was a common choice of suicide by dentists who had nitrogen readily available in their offices. Like divers who die of nitrogen narcosis, I would suppose they thought that at least they would die laughing. However, while I rarely go to the dentist these days, I have not seen nitrogen equipment in the clinic I use in a very long time.
With any method of execution of a prisoner who is a cruel butcher of their victims, other than firing squad or the guillotine, there is always a possibility that an execution will go wrong.
In any case, almost certainly every news media outlet out there will rush to put out stories that focus on “experts say”. Oddly enough, every expert they find will say it’s barbaric, inhuman, bizarre, etc.
And not a single expert they reference will say that the actual cruelty is having the condemned murderer wait and anticipate their execution for decades rather than executing them immediately. Ditto the cruelty of the murder victims’ family and friends also waiting decades for justice. Because, well… that’s different.
I imagine that the internet is now blowing up with searches from people with a morbid curiosity about how nitrogen can be lethal, to the point any search results will be focusing on this execution and all the supposed reasons it could be cruel.
Old Airborne. ” You have the relative lethality of the two [nitrogen and carbon monoxide] reversed, and neither is a poison.”
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Almost 80% of every breath you take is nitrogen and does you no harm. You aren’t even aware of it.
If 80% of each breath were carbon monoxide you would drop dead. Quickly.
Nitrogen is not a poison.
Carbon monoxide is a poison.
Death signals the difference.
Nitrogen is essentially inert and not a poison. Carbon monoxide is chemically active in ways that classify it as a poison. Cyanide is also a poison and blocks cellular respiration and kills quickly. Nitrogen does not interact with your body’s chemistry and is, therefore, not a poison. Carbon monoxide and cyanide do interfere directly with body chemistry in a harmful way and are therefore deemed poisons.
it is refreshing to see people discussing the sciences on this blog, particularly physiology and chemistry. Nitrogen gas in the atmosphere is composed of 2 atoms of nitrogen brought together by a triple bond. Triple bonds are nearly impossible to break without altering physical properties like temperature and pressure. Scuba divers dive to very deep pressures and it is then that the high pressures break nitrogenous gas from their scuba tanks, e.g. N€N where € is a triple bond.
Humans cannot break apart the triple bond of nitrogen gas. In fact plants cannot either. Bacteria and fungi are able to break apart the triple bond of nitrogen atoms so that we as humans can use the nitrogen atoms to synthesize the many proteins and nucleic acids that we need to survive. Life without nitrogen would be impossible. However nitrogen gas does nothing to our pulmonary system. Nitrogen gas if anything helps keep the lungs inflated by virtue of their high partial pressure . However nitrogen gas, again being two atoms of nitrogen brought together via triple bond, enters and exits the respiratory system without any glitch. I fail to understand why they would administer nitrogen gas to this prisoner when putting a plastic bag over his head would’ve done just the same thing and far cheaper. Since deprivation of oxygen, suffocation, is the goal, put a bag over his head and get it over with. On the other hand I’m against the death penalty in the USA making all of this just an academic exercise – and a break from my usual tasks
Nitrogen is the most abundant gas in the atmosphere and in the lung. Unlike other gases in the lung, it reacts minimally with hemoglobin (Hb). As a result, it has slow alveolar uptake. This slow uptake helps to prevent loss of alveolar volume; replacing N2 with oxygen is a common cause of atelectasis (1). Certain organisms—including specific species of bacteria, algae, and fungi—have the potential to modify molecular N2 directly. Humans do not.
Marozkina NV, Gaston B. Nitrogen chemistry and lung physiology. Annu Rev Physiol. 2015;77:431-52. doi: 10.1146/annurev-physiol-021113-170352.
Estovir,
I agree. It is refreshing to follow science oriented and courteous discussion on subjects like this or any other subject that invites thought.
As to nitrogen, the problem of ‘fixing’ nitrogen in compounds was an historic problem, originally with respect to fertilizers and low explosives using potassium nitrate. If I remember correctly, lightning storms provided enough energy to break the triple bond and fix nitrogen to other elements thus providing a natural system for fertilizing soil and promoting plant life long before we came along.
Besides bird guano there were other natural processes that fixed nitrogen and potassium to form saltpeter. During the French Revolution the government dredged cellars and the like to recover saltpeter for gunpowder needed on the battle fronts. Some process in the dark and decay slowly built up saltpeter in dirt cellars and basements. I don’t know what the process was or how the French chemists knew of it but it is interesting.
@Young,
I suggest that they hook him up to eeg, ekg, pulse OX to record his vitals as he dies.
you’ll see exactly how painless. (Also give him some ativan to take off the edge and anxiety )
Its not like a pillow or anything else. Your body doesn’t know what’s happening. There’s nothing to trigger a response from your body.
Honestly its the most humane way to kill someone.
“Honestly its the most humane way to kill someone.”
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Now that it has been done it is obvious from witness statements that this method wasn’t humane at all.
1989 to 2024…35 years!!! This was the plan of the Left to water down the death penalty as a deterrent. All behavior modification is based on timely punishment as a deterrent not only to the convicted criminal but others seeking to commit similar crimes. Now the Left argues for the abolition of the death penalty because it “lacks deterrence”. This entire process needs to be shortened to a few years from a few decades. Despite the efforts of the Left, the death penalty will always be a deterrent, moreover the “ultimate deterrent” for the convicted criminal as their recidivism rate after punishment drops to zero.
Actually death by nitrogen gas is relatively humane act. Actually the death is, of course, caused by the lack of oxygen. You simply slowly and progressively reduce the oxygen to 0. You fall asleep and then you die.
It’s all natural and no injections.
Our nation is ‘going to hell in a handbasket’ in my not so humble opinion. Take the ‘For Sale’ sign off the U.S. Capital building and send all the legislators home on their own dime…..problem solved!
Article 1, Section 8, and the 5th Amendment right to private property severely limit and restrict government.
“Legislators” don’t need to be sent home, they are severely restricted from doing much of anything by the Constitution.
The judicial branch has failed to execute its sworn-oath duty to support the clear meaning and intent of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The Constitution was first nullified and voided by “Crazy Abe” Lincoln who taught Americans to ditch the Constitution and adopt the Communist Manifesto.
Look around you at all the communism including central planning, control of the means production (i.e. unconstitutional regulation), redistribution of wealth, and social engineering.
Fly him to San Fran, take him downtown and have him roll around on the ground for a few minutes. Eventually he will hit a Fentanyl tab and be done with it.
Congrats to UpstateFarmer for Comment of the Day!
(After a rough night with a diarrheic/diarhetic spaniel, I needed a good laugh-boost like this)
Lin,
Glad to be of service!
Is the puppy okay now?
Use the Epstein Method
Tie a cinder block to each leg. Put the hangman’s rope noose around his neck. Offer him a shroud.
Entertain his last words. Pull the trap door lever, scumbag drops 10 feet to his death. Harvest any suitable organs. Incinerate what’s left to ashes. Buy the ashes in a prison cemetery.
Repeat, for all those on death row.
“Harvest any suitable organs.”
Are there any in a fellow like that?
Fentanyl seems to work well
Smith agreed to assist in this killing for only $1000. It appears that he was never paid. He deserves execution for pure stupidity. Hunter Biden can make millions of dollars by just making a telephone call next to his dad.
“The lawyer with a briefcase can steal more money than the man with the gun.” Mario Puzo (Godfather)
My favorite is and always has been “Sparky The Malfunctioning Electric Chair”
“. . . the brutal beating and stabbing of Elizabeth Sennett, 45, in 1988.”
Draw and quarter, keelhaul, disembowel.
Just get it done.
as if any doctor couldn’t kill a person in 1 minute if they wish…. pure Kabuki Theater
How about we get a VET….they have 100% record putting down animals!
He is an animal
America has succumbed to psychotic, bleeding-heart, liberal, milquetoast communists.
Why? F ’em!
How did Americans ever conquer the Indians and the Mexicans with such a dearth of conviction and resolve?
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
HE’LL SETTLE ‘EM DOWN
Beer For My Horses
Toby Keith
We got too many gangsters doing dirty deeds
We’ve got too much corruption, too much crime in the streets
It’s time the long arm of the law put a few more in the ground
Send them all to their maker and he’ll settle them down
You can bet he’ll set them down ’cause
For a guy who killed for hire, he seems to value his own life at least.
They all do…their’s is the only life they value.