By Brendan Clementz

Although the death penalty is legal in 21 states, only 7 used it throughout 2023. In Alabama, a new method was recently used to execute a convicted murderer — death by noxious gas. Critics of the death penalty are arguing that the scene it caused was “cruel and unusual punishment,” which is unconstitutional. 

In 1988, Kenneth Eugene Smith murdered a woman named Elizabeth Sennett because he was hired by someone who, in turn, was hired by Sennett’s own husband, Charles Sennett. The evidence showed incredibly suspicious behavior from Mr. Sennett, from taking out an insurance policy on his spouse while in an affair. 

After years of evading a verdict, Smith was found guilty in 2000 and was sent to death row. In January of this year, his punishment was fully realized. However, the state used a new, controversial method where they attached a face mask to the convicted and used nitrogen hypoxia to cause death by asphyxiation.

This new technique on trial itself for this execution has raised questions of whether it constitutes as “cruel and unusual punishment,” which would go against the 6th amendment to the Constitution. Despite assurance that the execution would be swift and humane, Smith was conscious for several minutes, at the beginning of which he thrashed in the chair. 

Oklahoma and Mississippi are the only other states that have approved nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method, and Alabama was the first to carry it out. With death by nitrogen hypoxia not yet an approved method of execution, the results will prove vital to prove or disprove its humanity.