Kenneth Smith Describes Alabama’s Failed Attempt to Execute Him

Alabama death-row pris­on­er Kenneth Smith spent four hours on November 17, 2022 strapped to an exe­cu­tion gur­ney while state pros­e­cu­tors attempt­ed to lift a stay of exe­cu­tion issued by a fed­er­al appeals court and his exe­cu­tion team repeat­ed­ly failed in attempts to set the intra­venous exe­cu­tion line intend­ed to kill him. He was left strapped to the gur­ney after prison offi­cials called off the botched exe­cu­tion, unaware that he was not to be put to death that night. 

These rev­e­la­tions, and more, came to light in plead­ings filed by Smith’s lawyers in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama on November 25, 2022 and report­ed by The Guardian December 28, 2022. In his Second Amended Complaint, which chal­lenged his exe­cu­tion by lethal injec­tion based on Alabama’s his­to­ry of failed and botched exe­cu­tion attempts, Smith tells the sto­ry of what hap­pened on the night Alabama tried and failed to exe­cute him.

The com­plaint alleges that, ​“as the night pro­gressed, as Mr. Smith was sub­ject­ed to ever-esca­lat­ing lev­els of pain and tor­ture, no one respond­ed to his pleas to stop the pain, told him of the Eleventh Circuit’s stay, or answered his ques­tions about what they were doing to him. They were — and he thought they were — executing him.”

Maya Foa, joint direc­tor of Reprieve, told The Guardian that ​“The recent spate of dis­as­trous lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions have shown that what­ev­er the drug, what­ev­er the pro­to­col, con­demned pris­on­ers often spend their final hours in ago­nis­ing pain and dis­tress. With each grue­some scene in the death cham­ber, we are wit­ness­ing the con­se­quences of per­sist­ing with a bro­ken method of exe­cu­tion, in real time.”

The Attempt to Execute Kenneth Smith

Smith’s com­plaint sets forth a detailed time­line of events sur­round­ing the botched attempt to execute him. 

At 7:45 pm, it says, as a motion to stay his exe­cu­tion was pend­ing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, coun­sel for the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) emailed Smith’s lawyers advis­ing defense coun­sel that ADOC had noti­fied the courts that ​“we are prepar­ing Mr. Smith for exe­cu­tion.” Guards end­ed Smith’s phone call with his wife at 7:57 p.m. and imme­di­ate­ly placed him in hand­cuffs and leg irons, took him to the exe­cu­tion cham­ber, and strapped him to the gurney.

Two min­utes lat­er, the Eleventh Circuit issued a stay, which Smith’s lawyers pro­vid­ed to ADOC at 8:02 p.m. ADOC replied, ​“Noted,” but left Smith strapped to the gur­ney until mid­night — a total of about four hours. During that time, ADOC nev­er informed Smith of the stay or the sta­tus of any oth­er legal pro­ceed­ings and did not per­mit him to speak with his coun­sel. Smith, the com­plaint alleges, believed his exe­cu­tion was imminent.

At 10 p.m., ADOC’s IV team entered the exe­cu­tion cham­ber and began to attempt to set an IV line. Around the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court lift­ed the Eleventh Circuit’s stay. It is unclear from the com­plaint whether the IV team began jab­bing Smith’s arms and hands with nee­dles before or after the stay was lift­ed. At one point in the process, Smith informed an exe­cu­tion team mem­ber that exe­cu­tion­ers were painful­ly insert­ing the nee­dle in his mus­cle. According to the com­plaint, the team mem­ber respond­ed, ​“No I’m not.” 

The exe­cu­tion team then adjust­ed the gur­ney to place Smith into an invert­ed cru­ci­fix­ion posi­tion, then left the room for sev­er­al min­utes. Upon their return, they inject­ed Smith with an unknown sub­stance, which Smith’s coun­sel believe to be ​“some sort of seda­tive and/​or anes­thet­ic.” Smith ​“specif­i­cal­ly object­ed to this injec­tion,” the com­plaint says, as the State ​“had been ordered not to use ​‘intra­mus­cu­lar seda­tion’ dur­ing his execution.”

Subsequently, an indi­vid­ual of ​“unknown med­ical cre­den­tials … start­ed repeat­ed­ly stab­bing [Smith’s] col­lar­bone area with a large nee­dle” in an attempt to begin plac­ing a cen­tral line IV, and a prison offi­cial ​“grabbed and held [Smith’s] head away from the area where the nee­dle was being insert­ed.” Smith describes sharp and intense pain, ​“as though he were being ​‘stabbed’ in the chest” as the indi­vid­ual ​“repeat­ed­ly jabbed him … under­neath his col­lar­bone.” Unbeknownst to Smith, around 11:20 pm, ​“unver­i­fied reports that the exe­cu­tion may have been called off started circulating.” 

Smith’s lawyers emailed state offi­cials for con­fir­ma­tion that the exe­cu­tion had been called off, but did not receive a response. Sometime before mid­night, the exe­cu­tion team told Smith ​“it’s over with.” When guards came to remove him from the exe­cu­tion cham­ber, Smith was trem­bling, sweat­ing, hyper­ven­ti­lat­ing, dizzy, and could not lift his own arms to be hand­cuffed or walk unassisted.

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed Smith’s stay of exe­cu­tion around 10:20 pm. ADOC ini­ti­at­ed Smith’s exe­cu­tion hours ear­li­er, con­tra­ven­ing a court-ordered stay and their own pro­to­col. The attempt to exe­cute Smith was the third con­sec­u­tive botched exe­cu­tion in Alabama. Following the inci­dent, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey called for a review of the state’s exe­cu­tion process. She also asked the Alabama Supreme Court to amend state court rules gov­ern­ing death war­rants to pro­vide ADOC per­son­nel more time to car­ry out exe­cu­tions, which the court approved January 12, 2023.