Alabama condemned for nitrogen gas execution: ‘They intended to torture him’

State’s ‘slow and agonizing’ execution of Kenneth Smith using an untested method labeled as cruel by experts and advocates

Alabama faced widespread condemnation after the state executed Kenneth Eugene Smith on Thursday evening using nitrogen gas, the first time the practice has been used in the United States to kill someone.

Smith’s execution by “nitrogen hypoxia” took around 22 minutes, according to media witnesses, who were led into a viewing room at the William C Holman correctional facility in Atmore shortly before 8 pm local time.

Smith was fitted with a face mask. He used sign language to say “I love you” to witnesses in the viewing room, and in his final statement he said: “Tonight, Alabama caused humanity to take a step backward.”

After the nitrogen gas began flowing, Smith convulsed on the gurney for several minutes. The state had previously said the nitrogen gas would cause Smith to lose consciousness in seconds and die within minutes, according to the Associated Press.

“I’ve been to four previous executions and I’ve never seen a condemned inmate thrash in the way that Kenneth Smith reacted to the nitrogen gas,” Lee Hedgepeth, a journalist who witnessed the execution, told the BBC’s Newsday programme.

Jeff Hood, Smith’s spiritual adviser, was in the death chamber when Smith was killed. In a tearful television interview with CNN, he said Smith “popped up on the gurney over and over and over again. He shook the whole gurney”.

“I have never, ever seen anything like that,” he said. “That was torture.”

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