State Supreme Court To Weigh AG’s Request To Execute Man By Breathing In Pure Nitrogen
Kate Anderson on August 26, 2023
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall filed a motion with the state Supreme Court Friday asking for an execution date for Kenneth Eugene Smith, who was convicted of murdering Elizabeth Sennett in 1988, according to court documents.
Smith is set to be executed via nitrogen hypoxia, which is legal in Oklahoma and Mississippi, but Alabama would be the first state to use it, according to the Associated Press. Smith’s execution was stopped on Nov. 17, 2022, due to issues with inserting an IV but Marshall noted in his motion to the court that it is now the “appropriate time” for the execution to be carried out.
“It is a travesty that Kenneth Smith has been able to avoid his death sentence for nearly 35 years after being convicted of the heinous murder-for-hire slaying of an innocent woman, Elizabeth Sennett,” Marshall said in a press release.
Nitrogen hypoxia happens when an individual exclusively breathes in nitrogen, which makes up 78% of the air, depriving the inmate of needed oxygen, according to the AP. Some have argued that this method of execution is a relatively painless way to die while others like Angie Setzer, a senior attorney with the Equal Justice Initiative, claim that it is a “completely unproven and unused method for executing someone.”
Smith murdered Sennett after her husband Charles Sennett, a local pastor who was in debt and having an affair, paid him and Smith’s friend John Parker $1,000 to kill her in order to obtain her life insurance policy, according to the press release. Smith and Parker ambushed Elizabeth Sennett and brutally beat and stabbed her to death and her husband killed himself a week after her death after police began to investigate him, according to CBS News.
Law enforcement quickly discovered the murder-for-hire scheme and Smith was tried and convicted in 1989 and again in 1996 after an appeal, according to the press release. The jury sentenced him to death in both cases.
Smith’s attorney did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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