Historic US nitrogen gas execution takes TWENTY TWO MINUTES as Kenneth Eugene Smith's last words revealed

It is the first use of a new method of capital punishment since lethal injections began in the US four decades ago.

In November 2022, Alabama officials aborted Smith's execution by lethal injection after struggling for hours to insert an intravenous line's needle in his body.

Human rights groups, United Nations torture experts and lawyers for Smith had sought to prevent it, saying the method was risky, experimental and could lead to an agonizing death or non-fatal injury.

In Smith's second and final trip to the execution chamber on Thursday, executioners restrained him in a gurney and strapped a commercial industrial-safety respirator mask to his face. A canister of pure nitrogen was attached to the mask that, once flowing, deprived him of oxygen.

His wife and other relatives attended and he gestured towards them. "I'm leaving with love, peace and light," he said, according to media witnesses. "Love all of you."

Alabama Corrections Commissioner John Hamm told a press conference: "It appeared that Smith was holding his breath as long as he could. He struggled against the restraints a little bit but it's an involuntary movement and some agonal breathing. So that was all expected."

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Smith mounted legal challenges in federal courts arguing that Alabama's new method amounted to unconstitutional "cruel and unusual punishment," but he failed to cross the high bar needed to have a judge order a delay of his execution.

Though poisonous gases such as hydrogen cyanide have been used in executions in the U.S. and beyond in the past, this was the first time a death sentence was carried out anywhere using an inert gas to suffocate someone, capital punishment experts say.

Oklahoma and Mississippi have also approved nitrogen asphyxiation methods for executions, but have yet to deploy it.

Smith, who has suffered from nausea since he survived his first execution attempt, also raised concerns he would vomit into the mask and choke. In response, prison officials said they would serve him his final meal on Thursday morning and forbid any solid foods after 10 a.m.. His final meal was steak, hash browns and eggs.

Smith was convicted of murdering 45-year-old Elizabeth Sennett, a preacher's wife, after he and accomplices each accepted a $1,000 fee from her husband to kill her, according to trial testimony.

11 of 12 jurors voted to sentence Smith to life in prison, but an Alabama judge overruled their recommendation under a law that has since been abolished as unconstitutional.

Several of Sennett's relatives attended the execution and told reporters they had forgiven Sennett's killers.

Her son, Mike Sennett, said: "Nothing that happened here today is going to bring mom back. It's a bittersweet day, we're not going to be jumping around, hooping and hollering, hooraying and all that, that's not us. We're glad this day is over."

Rev. Jeff Hood, Smith's spiritual adviser, was at Smith's side for the execution, and said prison officials in the room "were visibly surprised at how bad this thing went."

"What we saw was minutes of someone struggling for their life," Hood, attending his fifth execution in the last 15 months, told reporters. "We saw minutes of someone heaving back and forth. We saw spit.

"We saw all sorts of stuff from his mouth develop on the mask. We saw this mask tied to the gurney, and him ripping his head forward over and over and over again."

The execution began at 7:53 pm and Smith was declared dead at 8.25 pm.