Supreme Court rejects Alabama death row inmate's lethal gas claim

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected an Alabama death row inmate’s last-minute request for a stay of execution,moving him a step closer to being put to death using an untested method: nitrogen gas.

Kenneth Smith, sentenced to death for murdering Elizabeth Sennett in 1988, objected to being executed by nitrogen hypoxia because of the potential for the state to botch the procedure. He alleged it would violate his right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.

He is scheduled to be executed on Thursday.

The brief court order simply noted that Smith's application was denied. No justices publicly dissented.

Smith has a separate claim pending in federal court that could yet lead to the execution being called off.

Smith’s lawyers said nitrogen hypoxia has never been used to execute anyone in the United States. The last time an inmate was put to death using any form of lethal gas was in 1999, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The Supreme Court in May last year rejected an earlier attempt to put Smith to death by lethal injection.

Smith had argued that the state’s previous effort to execute him in November 2022 raised questions about its ability to use the new method effectively. Then, officials called off the execution after struggling to insert an intravenous line before the death warrant expired at midnight.

A new attempt would be “cruelly willful” and effectively constitute torture, his lawyers argued.

They said in their emergency request that if Alabama is allowed to go ahead with the execution it would be “only the second time in U.S. history that a state follows through with a second execution attempt after a previous, failed attempt.”

Alab