The state of Alabama is looking for to make use of an untested technique to execute a person on dying row whose execution was already botched as soon as earlier than.

Prosecutors need to push ahead with executing 58-year-old Kenneth Eugene Smith utilizing nitrogen hypoxia, which might contain him inhaling nitrogen with out the presence of oxygen, successfully inflicting suffocation.

During a scheduled execution final November, Smith survived 4 hours tightly strapped to the execution gurney. Executioners prodded him repeatedly close to his collarbone and arms, failing to discover a vein to inject him with a mix of chemical compounds that was purported to kill him.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall is seeking to set a brand new date for Smith’s execution.

“It is a travesty that Kenneth Smith has been able to avoid his death sentence for nearly 35 years after being convicted of the heinous murder-for-hire slaying of an innocent woman, Elizabeth Sennett,” Marshall stated in a assertion on Friday.

Smith was convicted within the Nineteen Eighties for killing Sennett, whose pastor husband, Charles Sennett, had employed Smith and one other particular person, John Forrest Parker, to kill her so he might money out on the insurance coverage coverage, in line with the Montgomery Advertiser.

In 2022, Smith’s attorneys sought to remain his execution, whereas the state saved transferring to push it ahead.

The day Smith was scheduled to be executed in November 2022, executioners struggled to entry a vein for the deadly injection. The execution staff was capable of set up one in every of two essential intravenous traces into one in every of Smith’s veins, however couldn’t efficiently set up a second one earlier than his dying warrant expired at midnight, The Associated Press reported. Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Q. Hamm stated executioners tried “several locations” on Smith, AL.com reported on the time.

“At some point before midnight, Defendants [ADOC] stopped their attempted execution of Mr. Smith, but not before inflicting grave physical pain and emotional trauma, the likes of which the human brain is not able to process,” Smith’s attorneys alleged in a movement in opposition to ADOC.

Smith was left on the gurney for hours, unaware that his execution had been stayed.

Alabama has botched a number of executions involving the extremely controversial deadly injection course of in recent times, failing to entry veins — together with that of Alan Eugene Miller, as soon as recognized to be the “only living execution survivor.” (Smith’s attorneys stated that Smith has now joined Miller as one of many solely two execution survivors within the U.S.)

“Alabama has a dismal record of ‘getting it right’ when it comes to executions – the state botched three lethal injection executions in 2022. It is the very last state that should now experiment using an unprecedented, untested procedure with unknown consequences,” Robin Maher, the chief director of the Death Penalty Information Center, informed HuffPost.

Smith had initially requested dying by nitrogen hypoxia. He isn’t the primary inmate to request an alternate execution technique. Two inmates in Oklahoma final 12 months requested dying by firing squad in an try to keep away from the opportunity of extended ache through the deadly injection course of. (While the deadly injection course of has been marketed as a “humane” approach to kill, the expertise has been in comparison with the feeling of being uncovered to a chemical fireplace.)

A closely redacted 41-page doc detailing the protocol for nitrogen hypoxia, a never-before-used process, says {that a} masks shall be positioned on the person’s face. “After the nitrogen gas is introduced, it will be administered for 15 minutes or five minutes following a flatline indication on the EKG, whichever is longer,” the doc reads. The process causes individuals to suffocate to dying on account of an absence of oxygen, and it’s permitted in Alabama, Oklahoma and Mississippi.

The Alabama Department of Corrections didn’t instantly reply to HuffPost’s request for remark. Smith’s attorneys declined to remark.