Guest
Alabama on Thursday executed a prisoner with nitrogen gas in what was the first use of a new controversial method of capital punishment. Human rights groups, UN torture experts and lawyers had sought to prevent it, saying the method was risky, experimental and could lead to an agonizing death or non-fatal injury. Kenneth Smith was convicted of the 1988 murder-for-hire of Elizabeth Sennett. He was one of only a few prisoners to have survived an execution attempt. In 2022, Alabama officials aborted his execution by lethal injection after struggling for hours to insert the needle in his body. In Smith's second trip to the execution chamber on Thursday, executioners restrained him in a gurney and strapped a respirator mask to his face. A canister of pure nitrogen was attached to the mask that, once flowing, deprived him of oxygen. Mike Graham is joined by The Spectator's Freddy Gray who says: “I don't think we should be gassing people.“
