Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall (R) touted the state's execution of death row inmate Kenneth Smith by a new method.
The state of Alabama executed Smith on Thursday night using nitrogen gas — the first time this method had been used in the United States. Smith had been convicted in the 1988 murder-for-hire killing of Elizabeth Sennett.
“As of last night, nitrogen epoxy as a means of execution is no longer an untested method; it is a proven one,” Marshall said in a Friday morning news conference. “It's the method that Kenny Smith ultimately chose, along with now 43 other death row inmates in our state.”
“Thanks to the Fair Justice Act, which our administration passed during our first year in office, we are finally starting to see these cases move faster,” Marshall said. “It is my hope that one day, sooner rather than later, that the Alabama attorney general won't have to stand up here and talk about how many decades some families had to wait before justice was served.”
Alabama had claimed that using nitrogen gas to execute Smith would be more efficient, rendering him unconscious within seconds and killing him within minutes. But the execution took much longer and Smith appeared to writhe for at least two minutes. Activists and Smith's attorneys decried the method, saying the state had used him as a test subject.
