Minute By Gruesome Minute

In Alabama, a murderer was executed overnight using an unproven and previously untested technique, resulting in what witnesses described as a terrifying 22-minute ordeal.

Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, was given a $1,000 payment to murder Elizabeth Sennett, a 45-year-old lady from Alabama, more than 30 years ago. Smith was given the death penalty for the crime. Since then, he has been on death row.

Smith was supposed to be put to death via lethal injection in 2022, but the effort was aborted at the last minute because the medical staff was unable to set up an IV line.

On Thursday night, the state attempted to execute him once more and was successful this time around by employing “nitrogen hypoxia,” which is the process of suffocating a victim by breathing gas through a mask.

Since 1982, when lethal injection was first utilised and subsequently became the most popular technique, this was the first time a new form of execution has been employed in the United States.

Alabama had predicted that the nitrogen gas would cause unconsciousness within seconds and death within minutes.

The execution at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, was everything from straightforward, according to those who witnessed it.

Witnesses said Smith appeared to shake and convulse at the start, pulled against his restraints, and breathed for up to ten minutes before finally falling unconscious.

Even though executions are never captured on camera in the US, the events can be pieced together from witness accounts provided by those who were present when Smith was put to death.

The entire execution—from the moment the curtains opened to the moment they were closed in the viewing room—took around 22 minutes, which was far longer than anticipated.

Witnesses waited in a viewing gallery for over an hour before Smith’s arms and body were shown, bound in cruciform, to the gurney at 7:53 p.m. local time (1:53 a.m. GMT).

His face was fastened to a mask that resembled a firefighter’s mask, which was connected to the nitrogen gas source and prepared for use.

Marty Roney of the Montgomery Advertiser, who witnessed the execution, said a plastic tube ran out of a hole in the concrete block wall of the execution chamber.

Pictures of Holman’s execution chamber from 2002 depict a drab, clinical room with two windows, one for the public gallery and one for the prison authorities supervising the death; however, it was unclear exactly what the room looked like.

Smith’s wife Deanna was watching through the window, along with a select few others. The murderer’s spiritual guide, Jeff Hood, touched Smith’s feet with a bible.

At 7.55 pm, Smith was allowed to speak his final goodbyes before the procedure began. He reportedly smiled when he recognised people in the media gallery.

Speaking through the gas mask strapped to his face, Smith made a heart sign and an ‘ok’ sign with his left hand to his family before declaring: ‘Tonight Alabama causes humanity to take a step backwards… I’m leaving with love, peace and light.

‘Thank you for supporting me. Love, love all of you,’ Smith added.

Then, at around 7.57 pm, a corrections officer checked the seal of Smith’s mask, while a prison warden remotely activated the ‘nitrogen hypoxia system’, delivering a fatal dose of toxic gas into Smith.

The prisoner would have been suffocated as a result of the gas filling his airways and blocking oxygen from reaching his brain.

In theory, the method involved replacing the air breathed by the inmate with 100 per cent nitrogen. Those who support the method say the process should be painless, pointing to nitrogen’s role in suicides or deadly industrial accidents.

However, witnesses said afterwards that it was too much longer for Smith to fall unconscious than Alabama officials had said. He pulled against his restraints and appeared to shake and convulse, as the gas filled his system.

While the murderer struggled to break free from his bindings, his spouse Deanna, donning a ‘Never Alone’ T-shirt, frantically called out to him from the observation stand.

Smith convulsed for four minutes, according to Marty Roney’s report. “When the gas started to flow, he seemed to be completely conscious,” he claimed.

Between 7.57 pm and 8.01 pm, ‘Smith writhed and convulsed on the gurney,’ he wrote.

‘He took deep breaths, his body shaking violently with his eyes rolling in the back of his head,’ his account continued. ‘Smith clenched his fists, his legs shook … He seemed to be gasping for air. The gurney shook several times.’

Situated fifteen feet away, Hood made the sign of the cross numerous times,’ according to Roney, and continued to bless him throughout Smith’s struggle and execution.

In the first four minutes, Roney said, “Hood took off his spectacles and wiped away tears as the gurney shook several times.”

Subsequently, Hood said that the execution was the ‘worst thing’ he had ever witnessed, stating that prison guards gasped in disbelief as Smith died rather slowly.

Hood stated, “He started to convulse when they turned on the nitrogen. He popped up on the gurney over and over again and shook the entire gurney.”

According to him, the jail guards there “were visibly surprised at how bad this thing went.” “What we saw was someone struggling for their life,” he continued.

Afterwards, at a news conference, Alabama’s Commissioner of Corrections John Hamm stated that it seemed as though Smith was holding his breath as long as he could.

Roney said at 8.02 pm, Smith appeared to lose consciousness, his chest remaining still for 20 seconds before he took ‘several large gasps for air’.

At 8.07 pm, a corrections officer leaned over Smith and examined him, before stepping back against the wall to allow for the execution to continue. It was at this point that Roney said Smith appeared to take his last breath.

Not that I think execution is acceptable—I don’t, and this is the reason why—but this man did a horrible act and was given the death penalty as a result. No one is authorised to carry out God’s task. I acknowledge that this individual killed another human being, but murdering someone does not make the victim return; rather, it only renders us all barbarous and guilty of yet another horrible act.

I do feel sorry for the so-called lovely peaceful Christians who are now cheering at his torturous death – how very Godly you all are.

We do not have the right to take the life of another person. What is it they say, ‘An eye for an eye and we all go blind’? It’s about the morals and ethics of a society that advocates the taking of a life in this manner.

And why in the world would anyone want to see an execution from the viewing room? To be doing that, you’d also have to be a little bit twisted. It isn’t an athletic endeavour.

Even if this man’s crime was horrific, it doesn’t mean that his death was ethically justified. This was merely another state-approved horrific murder. How do they sleep at night, I wonder? And those who murdered this man are no better.