Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has scheduled a date for the execution of an inmate who has decided to die by nitrogen hypoxia after surviving a lethal injection attempt last year.
In a letter to Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm, Ivey stated that the execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith would begin at midnight on January 25, 2024.
The DOC has until 6 a.m. to complete the execution. After Attorney General Steve Marshall requested an execution warrant for Smith, the Alabama Supreme Court granted the state permission to proceed last Thursday in a 6-2 vote.
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He was supposed to be executed on November 17, 2022, but the execution was postponed because the executioners were unable to connect two intravenous lines to him for a fatal injection.
Smith’s execution in January will be the first time a state has used the nitrogen hypoxia procedure, and legal wrangling is expected to intensify as the date approaches. The only other states authorized to utilize nitrogen gas for executions are Oklahoma and Mississippi, but none has employed the practice yet.
Related: Suspected Killer of a Wife While the Murder Case Awaits DNA, Brian Walshe Escapes One Legal Hit.
The proposed method would deprive the detainee of oxygen and force him to breathe only nitrogen. While supporters of the new procedure claim it will be painless, opponents compare it to human experimentation.
His lawyers argued against the approach and requested the court deny the execution request, calling it “experimental.”
“The state seeks to make Mr. Smith the test subject for the first ever attempted execution by an untested and only recently released protocol for executing condemned people by the novel method of nitrogen hypoxia,” Smith’s attorneys wrote in a court document filed in September.
Smith was condemned to death for the 1988 murder-for-hire of Elizabeth Sennett, whose pastor husband attempted to have her assassinated to pay off debts with life insurance proceeds. He had an extramarital affair as well.
“His scheme was to have his wife murdered, which would enable him—in one cowardly fell swoop—to escape both his financial obligations and his marital vows,” Marshall said of Westside Church of Christ pastor Rev. Charles Sennett.
Smith and his companion, John Parker, who was hanged in 2010, each received $1,000 for carrying out the plot. The two males ambushed her and punched, slapped, bludgeoned, and stabbed her with a six-inch knife to death.
Marshall claimed she was stabbed in the chest eight times and twice in the neck.
Ivey closed her letter to Hamm by stating that she has the right to provide a reprieve or commutation prior to the execution but that she has “no current plans to grant clemency in this case.”
