WASHINGTON: The US state of Alabama has carried out the country’s first execution using nitrogen gas, a controversial method the UN has compared to “torture.”
Local media reported that Kenneth Eugene Smith, who was sentenced to death in 1996 for a murder in 1988, was pronounced dead at 0225 GMT. Reuters and AFP also reported the development and termed it the first use of a new method of capital punishment that Alabama is advancing as a simpler substitute to lethal injections.
UN human rights experts and attorneys for Smith had sought to stop it, saying the process was risky, experimental and might lead to a torturous death.
In November 2022, Alabama authorities aborted his execution by lethal injection following struggling for hours to pullout an intravenous line’s needle in his body.
Legislators in Mississippi and Oklahoma have adopted similar nitrogen-asphyxiation execution protocols in recent years, but have yet to put them into practice.
Eleven of 12 judges voted to sentence Smith to life in prison, but an Alabama judge overruled their suggestions under a law that has since been abolished as extraconstitutional.
