Yesterday the United States became the first country to sentence a prisoner to death using nitrogen gas. Kenneth Eugene Smith (58) was sentenced to death in Alabama for murder in 1988. Nitrogen gas was used to cause a lack of oxygen (hypoxia) which caused Smith to slowly die.
In 2022 he was sentenced to death by poison injection but the difficulty of finding a blood vessel caused it to be stopped. Smith opposed the nitrogen death penalty being used on him, claiming it had not been proven humane to kill. His appeal was rejected by the court and the sentence was handed down yesterday.
According to witnesses, Smith thrashed for several minutes immediately after the nitrogen gas was fed to the mask attached to his head. After a few minutes his breathing slowed down and finally he was pronounced dead by the doctor.
Alabama is one of 27 states in the United States that still allows the death penalty to be imposed on certain felony offenders. In addition to using nitrogen, hanging, shooting, poison gas chambers, electric shocks and poisonous injections are also used to kill prisoners in the United States.