Alabama is seeking to become the first state to execute a prisoner by making him breathe pure nitrogen.
The Alabama attorney general’s office on Friday asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date for death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58. The court filing indicated Alabama plans to put him to death by nitrogen hypoxia, an execution method that is authorized in three states but has never been used.
Nitrogen hypoxia is caused by forcing the inmate to breathe only nitrogen, depriving them of oxygen and causing them to die. Nitrogen makes up 78% of the air inhaled by humans and is harmless when inhaled with oxygen. While proponents of the new method have theorized it would be painless, opponents have likened it to human experimentation.
“Smith was one of two men paid $1,000 each to murder Elizabeth Sennett on behalf of her preacher husband, Charles Sennett Sr., who was in debt and wanted to collect life insurance money.”
Hold on, so why is he being executed? He wasn’t the one who ordered the murder. It seems like lots of other people request murders but those people aren’t sentenced to death.
Because he accepted money in exchange to brutally beat and stabbed a person to death. “Just following orders,” has never been an acceptable excuse for an individual to commit a crime, but especially when it’s not an order in a military hierarchy, it’s payment and a voluntary agreement. Fuck him.
Sennet Sr. committed suicide the moment the police started to investigate him. That’s why he’s not about to be executed.
I don’t think that was the argument being made. The argument, to me, is why sentenced to death instead of some other sentence. And, were the others that are also part of this crime sentenced.
The article doesn’t seem to say anything about what happened to the others that are involved. Focused a lot on the execution method.
Sounds like the guy just did this for the money so I also don’t understand why he’s being sentenced to death. Should just be prison time. But, I don’t have all the facts here.
He’s sentenced to death because he committed a capital murder in a state with the death penalty and a jury found him guilty. “I did it for money” is not exactly a legal defense. An innocent person was still killed, and arguably doing it for money is worse. Fuck him.
The other guy involved in the killing has already been executed, over ten years ago. It’s a well documented case and took me about a minute of Googling to figure out this guy isn’t particularly being singled out for death and the other got a lighter sentence.
I personally don’t believe in the death penalty, but also if he didn’t want to be executed for murder, he shouldn’t have committed murder in the deep south.
“Preacher.”
Right, bro is just caught up in the rat race same as the rest of us
To be very, very clear, I do not support the death penalty but the rat race isn’t an excuse to kill someone.
I don’t think he was trying to find excuses.