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Alabama has set a May 30 execution date for a man convicted in the 2004 slaying of a couple during a robbery. Governor Kay Ivey set the date for the execution by lethal injection of Jamie Mills. The Alabama Supreme Court last week authorized the governor to set an execution date.
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Louisiana's Republican-dominated Legislature has given final passage to a bill that would add electrocution the use of nitrogen gas, like Alabama, as a method of carrying out the death penalty.
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Alabama is seeking to put a second inmate to death using nitrogen gas. The move comes a month after the state carried out the first execution using the controversial new method.
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Governor Kay Ivey is set to give her annual State of the State address from Montgomery. Her talk comes less than three weeks after Alabama conducted the nation’s first ever execution by nitrogen gas. An act opposed by the European Union and the United Nations Human Rights Council.
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Witnesses, including five news reporters, watched through a window, Kenneth Eugene Smith, who was convicted and sentenced to die in the 1988 murder-for hire slaying of Elizabeth Sennett, convulsed on a gurney as Alabama carried out the nation's first execution using nitrogen gas.
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Alabama's first-ever use of nitrogen gas for an execution could gain traction among other states and change how the death penalty is carried out in the United States, much like lethal injection did more than 40 years ago, according to experts on capital punishment. APR News raised this issue in its national coverage on NPR.
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A man put to death using nitrogen gas shook and convulsed for minutes on the gurney as Alabama carried out the first-of-its-kind execution that has ignited debate over the humaneness of the method.
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The European Union and the U.N. Human Rights Office are expressing regret over the death of convicted killer Kenneth Smith. The EU called the first ever use of nitrogen gas "particularly cruel." The U.N. says the death penalty does not deter crime. APR news may be asked to explain to news listeners in eastern Europe how Alabama administers capitol punishment. The investigative news website "Dnevnik" in Bulgaria’s capitol city of Sofia contacted APR and asked for our input.
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An Alabama inmate remains scheduled to be the first person in the United States to be put to death with nitrogen gas. The U.S. Supreme Court is rejecting a request for a stay of execution for Kenneth Eugene Smith. Prior to this decision, his attorneys were hoping for a last-minute reprieve from federal courts in his bid to halt the death sentence from being carried out.
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Alabama is just over a day away from the first ever execution using nitrogen gas. Kenneth Eugene Smith is on death row for the murder for hire of a preacher’s wife in 1988. The State wants to use a face mask on the inmate to pump in nitrogen until he dies of suffocation. Alabama claims the process is painless. The non-profit, non-partisan, criminal justice journalism organization The Marshall Project calls it experimental.