Agonising three-hour death from botched lethal injection, notorious last meals and the real-life execution that has eerie parallels to Green Mile: The grisly history of America’s death row
The upcoming execution of murderer Kenneth Eugene Smith with untested nitrogen has brought the controversial US death penalty system back into sharp focus.
Smith will be gassed with nitrogen hypoxia tomorrow at 6pm in Atmore, Alabama, after the US Supreme Court rejected his appeal.
It will be the first execution of its kind in the US and the first known nitrogen execution in the world.
But Smith’s death will be just the latest in a long line of officially sanctioned murders in the United States.
The successful 2000 film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel The Green Mile, which featured a gruesome execution scene involving an electric chair, was loosely based on the real-life case of 14-year-old George Stinney, who was electrocuted for the murder of two girls in 1944.
In 1928, housewife Ruth Snyder was similarly executed after killing her husband along with her lover. Incredibly, a photographer took a secret photo of the moment of her death using a camera strapped to his ankle.
The successful 2000 film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel The Green Mile, which featured a gruesome execution scene involving an electric chair, was loosely based on the real-life case of 14-year-old George Stinney, who was electrocuted for the murder of two girls in 1944.
In 1928, housewife Ruth Snyder was similarly executed after killing her husband along with her lover. Incredibly, a photographer took a secret photo of the moment of her death using a camera strapped to his ankle
In August 2022, convicted murderer Joe Nathan James underwent the longest execution in history when he was slowly put to death after a painful three-hour ordeal.
Last October, death row killer John Marion Grant shouted “let’s go!” before vomiting and convulsing “two dozen times” as an Oklahoma execution team administered a controversial three-drug lethal injection.
In 2014, again in Oklahoma, 38-year-old killer Clayton Lockett spent 40 minutes writhing in pain after also receiving a three-drug injection.
Other murderers put to death in the US have given some bizarre last words.
In 2012, Robert Charles Towery, convicted of murdering a man who lent him money, said: “I love my family. Potato, potato, potato,” before being put to death in Arizona, Texas.
The strange statement was actually a secret message to his cousin. Sources said he was trying to convey the sound a Harley-Davidson engine makes when idling.
His lawyer claimed this was the killer’s way of saying that “everything was fine.”
In 1987, double murderer Jimmy Glass said “I’d rather be fishing” just before he was executed in the electric chair.
It is believed that Stinney was the archetype of the Green Mile’s central character, John Coffey
The Texas execution chamber in Huntsville, where several inmates were murdered last year
Joe Nathan James, pictured, suffered the longest execution in American history in August 2022
Alabama can put murderer Kenneth Eugene Smith to death with nitrogen gas, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday
He had escaped from Louisiana prison with fellow inmate Jimmy Wingo in 1982 and then shot and killed a man and woman after breaking into their home.
In 1928, George Appel, convicted of murdering a police officer in Brooklyn, New York, said “well gentlemen, you’re about to see a fried Appel” as he was strapped to the electric chair.
Some death row inmates have had some particularly remarkable last meals.
Serial killer John Wayne Gacey swallowed 12 fried shrimp, a bucket of KFC, French fries and a pound of strawberries before being executed in Illinois in 1994 for the murders of at least 33 young men and boys.
Timothy McVeigh, the American terrorist behind the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, enjoyed two pints of mint chocolate ice cream before receiving the lethal injection at the age of 33.
The execution of black teenager George Stinney was extremely controversial. He was the youngest American to be sentenced to death and executed in the 20th century.
His conviction was overturned in 2014 – 70 years after he was put to death – after a court ruled he had not received a fair trial.
It is believed that Stinney was the archetype of the Green Mile’s central character, John Coffey.
Like the young boy, Coffey was convicted by an all-white jury and found innocent of his alleged crimes.
Kenneth Smith will be executed on Thursday with nitrogen gas, which has been labeled “torture” by the UN and scientists have largely banned animal testing
Prosecutors said Smith and John Forrest Parker were each paid $1,000 to kill Elizabeth Sennett for husband Charles Sennett Sr., who was deeply in debt and wanted to collect insurance premiums.
Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, is one of two men convicted in the 1988 murder-for-hire of a pastor’s wife that rocked a small north Alabama community.
Prosecutors said he and the other man were each paid $1,000 to kill Elizabeth Sennett on behalf of her husband, who was deeply in debt and wanted to collect on insurance.
Sennett, 45, was found dead in her Colbert County home on March 18, 1988, with eight stab wounds to the chest and one on each side of her neck, the coroner said.
Her husband, Charles Sennett Sr., committed suicide when the investigation focused on him as a suspect, court documents show.
Smith’s initial 1989 conviction was overturned on appeal, but he was retried and convicted again in 1996.
The jury voted 11 to 1 to recommend a life sentence, but a judge overruled that and sentenced him to death. Alabama no longer lets judges overrule jury decisions in death penalty cases.
John Forrest Parker, the other man convicted of the murder, was executed in 2010.
Smith was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection last year, but nurses struggled to find a clear vein in time before the execution order expired.
A panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Smith’s request for an injunction to halt his scheduled execution for nitrogen hypoxia on Thursday.
Smith’s lawyers have argued that the state is trying to make him a test subject for an untested execution method and are expected to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The method involves placing a respirator face mask over the nose and mouth to replace the inhaled air with nitrogen, which causes death from lack of oxygen.