Supreme Court rules in favor of death row inmate seeking lethal gas over injection
Rachel Schilke
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The Supreme Court sided with an Alabama death row inmate on his preferred execution method in a ruling released Monday.
Inmate Kenneth Smith, who was sentenced to death for the contract murder of Elizabeth Sennett in 1988, asked to die by lethal gas instead of lethal injection, the latter of which is the typical method for the death penalty. Smith argued it would cause a severe amount of pain, violating his Eighth Amendment rights to be free of cruel and unusual punishment.
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The Supreme Court affirmed the decision from the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that ruled in Smith’s favor, with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissenting, writing that they would have ruled in favor of the state.
“When the question is whether the Eighth Amendment requires a state to replace its chosen method with an alternative method in executing the plaintiff, it is simply irrelevant, without more, that the state’s statutes authorize the use of the alternative method that are to take place sometime in the indefinite future,” Thomas wrote.
Alabama called off Smith’s execution in November 2022 after failing to set an IV line for the lethal injection before midnight, when the death warrant expired. The state said it attempted to prepare Smith by puncturing “several” locations but failed to establish an intravenous line necessary for execution.
The appeals court had sided with Smith, saying that lethal gas was an approved execution method. The state argued that, although lethal gas was approved as a manner of execution in 2018, an execution protocol has not been finalized, per NBC News. It gave prisoners 30 days to choose an alternative method, which the state claims Smith did not choose at the time.
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With the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling, lethal gas for execution remains a viable alternative option for Smith.
There have been nine executions so far in the United States in 2023, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The U.S. carried out 18 executions in 2022, with 20 total attempted. The Death Penalty Information Center christened 2022 as the “year of the botched execution,” stating that seven of the 20 execution attempts were “visibly problematic” due to executioner incompetence or protocol failures.