We have news that Alabama has executed convicted murderer Kenneth Smith with nitrogen gas, the first time the method of capital punishment has been used in the US.

Smith was convicted in 1989 of murdering a preacher’s wife, Elizabeth Sennett, in a killing-for-hire.

However, he lost two final appeals to the Supreme Court and one to a federal appeals court, which argued the execution was a cruel and unusual punishment.

Recall in 2022, Alabama tried and failed to execute Smith by lethal injection.

Meanwhile 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.