Alabama finally executed Kenneth Smith, having gotten the go-ahead from the Supreme Court on January 24. But it wasn’t the first time for him. Alabama unsuccessfully executed him in 2022 using the lethal injection method. It didn’t work.

This time, they used nitrogen gas, which had not been used before. This time, the execution worked. This time, he reportedly died at 8:25 p.m. C.S.T. on January 25.

“Alabama has chosen this condemned person, this protocol, and this moment, even though Mr. Smith is suffering mentally and physically from the posttraumatic stress Alabama caused when it botched its first attempt to execute him in 2022,” Circuit Judge Jill Pryor wrote in her dissent of the denial of the stay of execution.

“If Mr. Smith vomits, his executioners will not intervene–they have told us so–even as vomit fills the mask and flows into Mr. Smith’s nose and mouth. Then, at last, Mr. Smith’s body will succumb to the effects of oxygen deprivation, asphyxiation, or both. He will die. The cost, I fear, will be Mr. Smith’s human dignity, and ours.”

On X, formerly known as Twitter, Sister Helen Prejean, a Roman Catholic nun best known for her active and vocal opposition to the death penalty.

Sister Prejean wrote, “In Alabama, a jury can recommend a life sentence by an 11-1 vote only to be overridden by a judge. The state can botch a lethal injection only to try again later with an untested gas mask apparatus. That’s the reality for Kenny Smith. It’s unconstitutional and it’s wrong.”

The United Methodist Church lists on its Faith and Facts page of the website what the Bible says about principal human rights issues, including the death penalty: 

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also…You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. (Matthew 5:38-39, 43-44)

And so the church has adopted a stance based on that scripture. 

“We believe all human life is sacred and created by God and therefore, we must see all human life as significant and valuable. When governments implement the death penalty (capital punishment), then the life of the convicted person is devalued and all possibility of change in that person’s life ends…”

And then there’s the demographic makeup of Death Row. 

An analysis by Statista found that as of January 2023, about 978 inmates on Death Row in the U.S. were white. Another 961 Death Row inmates in that same year were Black — a disproportionate number given that Black people are 13.6% of the population.

Innocence is another factor. The Innocence Project website lists several horrific examples of people spending years of their lives on Death Row for crimes they didn’t commit:

  • Huwe Burton was exonerated in 2019 after spending 19 years in prison for a crime he did not commit and carrying a wrongful conviction for nearly 28 years.
  • Rafael Ruiz was exonerated in 2020 after serving his entire sentence of 24 years for convictions that were vacated.
  • Christopher Tapp was exonerated in 2019 after serving 20 years of a life sentence.

While none of these people were ever sentenced to death, they, and many more, illustrate how easily people can be wrongly imprisoned.

The Innocence Project also estimates that between 2.3% and 5% of all prisoners in the U.S. are innocent (for context, if just 1% of all prisoners are innocent, that would mean that more than 20,000 innocent people are in prison).

This makes the death penalty such an act of cruelty as well as a tool of injustice, one that has been abolished in most countries, and even most states, with the exception of Alabama, Arizona, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas.