Alabama has executed convicted murderer Kenneth Eugene Smith with nitrogen gas, the first time the method of capital punishment has been used in the US. Ednews repots referring to the BBC.

Smith, 58, lost two final appeals to the Supreme Court and one to a federal appeals court, arguing the execution was a cruel and unusual punishment.

In 2022, Alabama tried and failed to execute Smith by lethal injection.
He was convicted in 1989 of murdering a preacher's wife, Elizabeth Sennett, in a killing-for-hire.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Smith is the first person to be put to death using pure nitrogen gas anywhere in the world.

Alabama and two other US states have approved the use of nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative method of execution because the drugs used in lethal injections have become more difficult to find, contributing to a fall in the use of the death penalty nationally.

Witnesses observed two to four minutes of writhing and about five minutes of heavy breathing before he was pronounced dead at 20:25 local time (02:35 GMT).
Breathing nitrogen without oxygen causes cells in the body to break down and leads to death.
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, who did not respond to a request to attend the execution, confirmed Smith's death in a statement.