US Supreme Court declines to halt nation’s first nitrogen-gas execution in Alabama case
- The justices denied convicted murder Kenneth Smith’s request to stay the execution, after he survived a botched lethal injection in 2022
- Several US states have introduced new gas protocols for the death penalty, as the drugs used for lethal injection become harder to obtain
The US Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to halt Alabama from proceeding with the nation’s first execution using nitrogen gas to carry out the death penalty on convicted murderer Kenneth Smith, who survived a botched lethal injection in 2022 that helped prompt a review of the state’s death penalty procedures.
The justices denied Smith’s request to stay his execution, which is scheduled for Thursday, and declined to hear his legal challenge contending that a second execution attempt by Alabama – after the first failed attempt caused him severe trauma – would violate the US Constitution’s Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
No justice publicly dissented from the decision.
Alabama’s gassing method – called nitrogen hypoxia – was designed to deprive Smith of oxygen by placing a mask connected to a cylinder of nitrogen over his face.
A majority of the justices in 2022 cleared the way for the first attempted execution of Smith, who was sentenced to death for his role in a 1988 murder-for-hire plot. The nine-member Supreme Court’s three liberal justices dissented from that previous decision.