{"id":9730,"date":"2023-11-09T15:40:35","date_gmt":"2023-11-09T23:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=9730"},"modified":"2023-11-09T15:40:35","modified_gmt":"2023-11-09T23:40:35","slug":"murderer-set-to-be-executed-by-nitrogen-gas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=9730","title":{"rendered":"Murderer Set to be Executed by Nitrogen Gas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An Alabama murderer has been scheduled for execution between January 25 and 26 of 2024.\u00a0 Kenneth Eugene Smith was twice convicted of murdering Elizabeth Sennett in March of 1988.\u00a0 As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2023\/11\/08\/us\/alabama-first-execution-nitrogen-gas-2024\/index.html\">reported<\/a> by Devon M. Sayers and Emma Tucker of CNN, earlier this year Smith won a state Supreme Court decision accepting his request to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia rather than by lethal injection.\u00a0 The article cites a description of the method by the Death Penalty Information Center (an opponent of capital punishment) as depriving the brain and body of oxygen, so the inmate would die by suffocation.\u00a0 That is technically true, but a person breathing nitrogen gas simply goes to sleep painlessly.\u00a0 Last year 717 Americans died similar deaths from accidentally breathing carbon monoxide.\u00a0 Now Smith&#8217;s attorneys argue that nitrogen hypoxia is an untested experimental method which is unwarranted.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/casetext.com\/case\/smith-v-state-4192\">decision<\/a> by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals describes how Smith and two accomplices were hired in March of 1988 by Elizabeth Sennett&#8217;s husband to kill her. They were offered $1,000 each to commit the crime. They were told to make the murder look like a robbery gone bad. On March 18, Smith and the accomplices went to the Sennett&#8217;s rural home and when she allowed them in, they beat her with fireplace tools and fatally stabbed her eight times with a survival knife.\u00a0 They then took a VCR and stereo from the house.\u00a0 Police later found the VCR in Smith&#8217;s home. Smith gave police a full confession, which his attorneys later attempted to have excluded from trial. His statements to police were <span class=\"fc-falcon\">corroborate<\/span>d by the accomplices and other witnesses. Later, when police closed in on the victim&#8217;s husband, he committed suicide.\u00a0 Smith&#8217;s first conviction was overturned by an Alabama court based on his claim that some jurors were excluded because of their race.\u00a0 At his retrial, a second jury convicted Smith of the murder but recommended a life without parole sentence. The judge overruled the jury and imposed a death sentence.<\/p>\n<p>CJLF has been recommending nitrogen gas for executions for over a decade.\u00a0 Nitrogen gas makes up 78% of earth&#8217;s atmosphere and is available at hardware stores.\u00a0 Several states have been forced to postpone executions due to the difficultly of getting the most effective lethal injection drugs, due to pressure on pharmaceutical companies by death penalty opponents. The U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged this in its 2015 <strong>Glossip v. Gross<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/576\/14-7955\/\">decision<\/a>.\u00a0 The adoption of nitrogen gas for executions would eliminate this problem.\u00a0 Several other condemned Alabama murderers have requested it for their executions.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An Alabama murderer has been scheduled for execution between January 25 and 26 of 2024.\u00a0 Kenneth Eugene Smith was twice convicted of murdering Elizabeth Sennett in March of 1988.\u00a0 As reported by Devon M. Sayers and Emma Tucker of CNN, earlier this year Smith won a state Supreme Court decision accepting his request to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia rather than by lethal injection.\u00a0 The article cites a description of the method by the Death Penalty Information Center (an opponent of capital punishment) as depriving the brain and body of oxygen, so the inmate would die by suffocation.\u00a0 That is technically true, but a person breathing nitrogen gas simply goes to sleep painlessly.\u00a0 Last year 717 Americans died similar deaths from accidentally breathing carbon monoxide.\u00a0 Now Smith&#8217;s attorneys argue that nitrogen hypoxia is an untested experimental method which is unwarranted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Murderer Set to be Executed by Nitrogen Gas - Crime &amp; Consequences<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=9730\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Murderer Set to be Executed by Nitrogen Gas - Crime &amp; Consequences\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An Alabama murderer has been scheduled for execution between January 25 and 26 of 2024.\u00a0 Kenneth Eugene Smith was twice convicted of murdering Elizabeth Sennett in March of 1988.\u00a0 As reported by Devon M. Sayers and Emma Tucker of CNN, earlier this year Smith won a state Supreme Court decision accepting his request to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia rather than by lethal injection.\u00a0 The article cites a description of the method by the Death Penalty Information Center (an opponent of capital punishment) as depriving the brain and body of oxygen, so the inmate would die by suffocation.\u00a0 That is technically true, but a person breathing nitrogen gas simply goes to sleep painlessly.\u00a0 Last year 717 Americans died similar deaths from accidentally breathing carbon monoxide.\u00a0 Now Smith&#8217;s attorneys argue that nitrogen hypoxia is an untested experimental method which is unwarranted.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=9730\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Crime &amp; Consequences\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/CriminalJusticeLegalFoundation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-11-09T23:40:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/FB_DefaultLJ.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"300\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"400\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Michael Rushford\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Michael Rushford\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=9730\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=9730\",\"name\":\"Murderer Set to be Executed by Nitrogen Gas - Crime &amp; Consequences\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2023-11-09T23:40:35+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/#\/schema\/person\/818db0b54694df828fde443a64c42758\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=9730#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=9730\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=9730#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Murderer Set to be Executed by Nitrogen Gas\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/\",\"name\":\"Crime &amp; Consequences\",\"description\":\"Crime and criminal law\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/#\/schema\/person\/818db0b54694df828fde443a64c42758\",\"name\":\"Michael Rushford\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.cjlf.org\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?author=3\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Murderer Set to be Executed by Nitrogen Gas - Crime &amp; Consequences","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=9730","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Murderer Set to be Executed by Nitrogen Gas - Crime &amp; Consequences","og_description":"An Alabama murderer has been scheduled for execution between January 25 and 26 of 2024.\u00a0 Kenneth Eugene Smith was twice convicted of murdering Elizabeth Sennett in March of 1988.\u00a0 As reported by Devon M. 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