“Tonight Alabama causes humanity to take a step backwards...Thank you for supporting me. Love you all”.
These were the last words of convicted Alabama murderer Ken Smith before turning to his family and signing the words “I love you” on Thursday moments before he was executed by nitrogen gas.
His execution became the first ever in the history of the US and world.
The 58-year-old is said to have been strapped to a gurney and fitted with a mask and a breathing tube that controlled the gas.
The execution began at 7:53 pm, and the nitrogen mask was kept on Smith for about five minutes after he flatlined.
In the 22-minute process, Smith is said to have gasped for air repeatedly.
Journalists who had been allowed into the room witnessed the process; The Independent and other multiple news channels narrated how Smith appeared to struggle.
They said Smith appeared conscious before shaking and writhing within the restraints on the gurney and was breathing heavily.
“I have been to four previous executions and I have never seen a condemned inmate thrash in the way that Kenneth Smith reacted to the nitrogen gas,” Lee Hedgepeth said.
Alabama Department of Corrections commissioner John Hamm said the nitrogen flowed through a mask for around 15 minutes.
Also present was the family of Smith’s victim, 45-year-old Elizabeth Sennett who was brutally murdered in a $1,000 killing-for-hire job.
Moments before his execution, he was also visited in prison by his wife and sons.
He was also given a last meal of T-bone steak, hash browns, toast and eggs, which he reportedly hardly ate.
Smith’s spiritual adviser, Rev Dr Jeff Hood told reporters:
“When they turned the nitrogen on, he (Smith) began to convulse, he popped up on the gurney over and over again, he shook the whole gurney."
The use of nitrogen gas in executions has been approved by three states, including Alabama in 2018, along with Oklahoma and Mississippi.
Smith was originally scheduled to be put to death with deadly drugs in November 2022 but prison officials had difficulty inserting the second intravenous line and had the exercise called off.
Smith, convicted in the 1988 murder of Elizabeth Sennett was executed at Holman Prison in Alabama.
While nitrogen gas has never previously been used to execute humans in the United States, it is sometimes used to kill animals.
According to authorities, the method was picked because it has become difficult to find lethal injection drugs.
The UK and the European Union banned exports of the chemicals in 2011, and five years later American drugs giant Pfizer, the last open-market source of lethal injection drugs, announced it would no longer sell them to be used in executions.
Execution methods vary, but some states still allow execution by hanging, firing squad or the electric chair.
In recent decades, most states have settled on lethal injection as the main execution method.
Texas was the first state to execute a convicted criminal with lethal injection, in 1982.
Amnesty International recorded 883 executions worldwide in 2022.
