An appeal to the Governor of Alabama to stop the execution of Kenneth Smith by nitrogen “before it is too late” was made today, just hours before the execution of the death penalty – Amnesty International USA.

“The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, and we urge Alabama Governor Kay Ivey to use the power of clemency to stop Kenneth Smith’s execution before it is too late,” the organization said.

The 58-year-old American death row inmate will be executed with pure nitrogen after losing last-minute appeals.

Alabama will become the first state to execute a death row inmate in this way, and it has sparked a storm of reaction worldwide.

“Alabama should stop Smith’s execution and completely abolish the death penalty,” states Human Rights Watch (HRW), stressing that nitrogen execution is a method that is not based on any scientific evidence.

The UN has already expressed concern that nitrogen execution – which has never been tried before – could constitute “torture” for the dying.

In this type of execution, death is caused by nitrogen hypoxia, replacing the oxygen the death row inmate breathes with nitrogen.

Smith has been sentenced to death for a murder-for-hire he committed in 1988.

His execution by lethal injection in November 2022 was called off at the last minute after all attempts to administer the drug intravenously failed. He is one of two people alive in the US after botched executions.

Why was he convicted?

In 1988 a man had hired Smith and another to kill his wife. Despite the man’s suicide, the authorities identified the two perpetrators of the murder.

Smith was sentenced to death in the first instance, a sentence that was overturned on appeal. At his second trial in 1996, he was again found guilty of murder, but jurors were divided on the sentence he should be given: 11 out of 12 had recommended life imprisonment. Ignoring their suggestion, the judge chose to sentence him to the death penalty, which was legal at the time but is now banned across the US.

Based on this fact, Smith’s lawyers appealed to the US Supreme Court in an attempt to delay his execution, but the court rejected their request.

Most executions in the US are carried out with the use of large doses of barbiturates, but some states have difficulty obtaining these drugs because the EU prohibits pharmaceutical companies from selling preparations that can be used in executions.