A DEATH row inmate is set to become the first to die by nitrogen gas execution in America on Thursday evening.
Kenneth Eugene Smith's lawyers have argued the state is trying to make him the test subject for an unconstitutional and experimental method of capital punishment.
A federal appeals court on Wednesday refused to block what would be the nation’s first new execution method since 1982.
His legal team is expected to appeal to the US Supreme Court in a final bid to stop his death from going ahead.
Smith, 58, is one of two men convicted in the murder-for-hire slaying of a preacher’s wife in 1988 that rocked a small north Alabama community.
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He has been kept in the Holaman correction facility in Alabama and has stayed a few feet away from the death chamber that he will soon face.
His execution date has been set for Thursday, January 25, but Smith said he has not come to terms with his apparent fate.
“I am not ready for that. Not in no kind of way,” Smith told The Guardian.
“I’m just not ready, brother.”
Smith faced a botched execution attempt in November 2022 after prison officials were unable to find a vein to administer a lethal injection.
The attempt was called off as they were unable to connect the two intravenous lines to his veins.
Smith has since been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome and his attorneys said he was strapped to the gurney for nearly four hours that day.
Smith has said that he faced recurring nightmares of the death chamber following the failed attempt and is on a mixture of medications for this, according to The Guardian.
“All I had to do was walk into the room in the dream for it to be overwhelming. I was absolutely terrified,” he said.
“It kept coming up.”
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Smith said that his symptoms and trauma had worsened since he received his second execution attempt date.
“They haven’t given me a chance to heal,” he said.
“I’m still suffering from the first execution and now we’re doing this again. They won’t let me even have post-traumatic stress disorder – you know, this is ongoing stress disorder.”
This new execution method has proven to be controversial.
This method would kill Smith through nitrogen hypoxia after a respirator-type face mask is placed over his nose and mouth, according to the Associated Press.
Breathable air will be replaced with nitrogen, which would cause death due to a lack of oxygen in the body.
The state of Alabama said the inmate would lose consciousness within seconds and die within minutes.
Critics of the method have claimed the state cannot be sure what will happen as the method is untested and Smith’s legal team has said he is at risk for a prolonged suffering and choking to death on his own vomit.
The 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Smith’s last-minute request to stop the execution in a 2-1 decision, according to AP.
These judges said that Smith had failed to explain how this method would violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment but added that there was “no doubt that death by nitrogen hypoxia is both new and novel.”
Smith was convicted for the murder of Elizabeth Sennett in 1988.
Prosecutors said the two men were paid $1,000 by Sennett’s husband who was in debt and wanted to collect insurance money.
The second hitman, John Forrest Parker, was executed in 2010 and Sennett’s husband killed himself before prosecutors arrested him.
