Because they could not locate a suitable vein for the lethal injection, state officials in Alabama decided to postpone a man’s execution on Thursday, Dec. 1, before the deadline on the same day. The prisoner was convicted in the 1998 murder-for-hire assassination of a preacher’s wife.
Lethal Injection Gone Wrong
According to John Hamm, commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections, employees at the jail tried for an hour to connect Kenneth Eugene Smith to the two necessary intravenous lines.
After establishing one line, attempts to use a second line at various points on the 57-year-old body were unsuccessful. Then, officials tried a central line that involved inserting a catheter into a significant vein, Fox News said.
The state must return to court to ask for a fresh execution date since the death warrant expired at midnight.
Since September, the state has postponed a second execution because of issues setting up an IV line in time for the death.
By lifting the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ earlier-issued stay, the Supreme Court made it possible for Smith to be executed, as per MSN.
After Smith’s final appeals, which centered on issues with the intravenous lines during the last two scheduled executions in Alabama, were postponed.
Death by Lethal Injection in Alabama
Alabama began using lethal injection on July 1, 2018. Unless the prisoner expressly requests electrocution or nitrogen hypoxia in writing and sent to the warden of the correctional facility within 30 days following the certificate of judgment according to a decision by the Alabama Supreme Court sustaining the sentence of death, the Death Penalty Information Center said.
The lethal injection must be used as the method of execution if electrocution or nitrogen hypoxia is deemed unconstitutional. If lethal injection is ruled unconstitutional or otherwise becomes impractical, nitrogen hypoxia will be used as the method of execution, according to Alabama Code § 15-18-82.1.
All people who have been condemned to death for a capital crime must be executed by any constitutional method at the sole discretion of the Commissioner of the Department of Corrections if electrocution, nitrogen hypoxia, and lethal injection are all found to be illegal, as per the Alabama Code § 15-18-82.1.c.
