A gruesome execution in Alabama is yet another reminder of the need to eliminate the death penalty | Editorial

The death penalty is an antiquated and barbaric punishment. Alabama’s experimental use of nitrogen gas to kill Kenneth Eugene Smith last week did nothing to disabuse anyone of the notion that the death penalty remains cruel and unusual punishment in any civil society.

The first-of-its-kind use of nitrogen gas was tried after the state botched an attempt in 2022 to execute Smith by lethal injection. Alabama’s Attorney General Steve Marshall had the gall to claim Smith’s execution was “textbook.”

But eyewitnesses told a different story. Smith’s execution lasted roughly 22 minutes from the time the viewing room curtains opened and closed. He was forced to breathe pure nitrogen through a gas mask to cause oxygen deprivation.

For at least two minutes, Smith shook violently and writhed on the gurney, pulling against the restraints used to strap him down. His eyes were open as he gasped and convulsed. That was followed by five to seven minutes of heavy breathing. The curtain closed 10 minutes before Smith was pronounced dead. The state could not give an exact time of death.

An anesthesiologist at Emory University School of Medicine who has researched lethal injections likened Smith’s death to torture. A similar fate awaits 43 other death row inmates in bloodthirsty Alabama.

Smith, 58, was convicted of the murder-for-hire killing of Elizabeth Sennett in 1988. The Rev. Charles Sennett Sr. paid a man $1,000 to kill his wife. That man recruited Smith and another man, who beat and stabbed her to death.

Some may argue Smith deserved to die. But who deserved to kill him? The state certainly did not have the right to torture him to death. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, but everything about the state carrying out a premeditated murder is cruel and unusual.

That is just one reason why the United States should do away with the death penalty, as scores of other developed and undeveloped countries have done over the years. (China, Iran, North Korea, Yemen, and the U.S. lead the world in government executions, placing America among brutal company.)

But the strongest argument for ending the death penalty is that an innocent person may die. Indeed, at least 20 people are believed to have been wrongly executed in the United States since 1989. Nearly another 200 death row inmates have been exonerated since 1973.

Tens of thousands more people are believed to be in prison for crimes because of wrongful convictions. In Philadelphia, dozens of inmates have been exonerated just in the last five years. One Philadelphia man was released last week after spending 50 years in prison for a murder he did not commit.

Taking away an innocent person’s liberty is horrific enough. The chance that they could die is reason enough to do away with the death penalty. Beyond that, the main argument for the death penalty is that it deters crime. But research shows it is not a deterrence. And vengeance is not justice.

Evidence also shows the death penalty is applied unevenly by race and class. The majority of death row inmates are Black or brown. Nearly all death row inmates are poor and cannot afford to mount a strong, let alone adequate, legal defense.

Maintaining a death row is also a waste of taxpayers’ money. Studies show inmates on death row cost about $1 million more than the cost to keep someone in prison for life. California has spent more than $5 billion on its death row, and executed just 13 people.

Pennsylvania has more than 100 inmates on death row but has not carried out an execution since 1999. Last year, Gov. Josh Shapiro called on state lawmakers to abolish the death penalty, as 23 other states have rightly done.

“The commonwealth should not be in the business of putting people to death,” Shapiro said.

Pennsylvania should not aspire to be like Alabama. It is past time to get on the right side of history.