On March 18, 1988, Kenneth Eugene Smith and John Forrest Parker brutally beat and stabbed Elizabeth Sennett to death. They carried out the murder for her husband, Charles Sennett, and were hired by one of his tenants for the pay of $1,000 dollars each.
John Forrest Parker was executed for his crime in 2010. After exhausting all forms of appeal in the court system, Smith was finally put to death on Jan 25 of this year.
Smith’s execution was the first of its kind in the US. The state killed him with nitrogen gas, a method called humane by Alabama state officials. Before the execution, Smith was predicted to go unconscious within seconds and die within 10-15 minutes.
Witness reports tell a different story of the actual execution, in which Smith appeared conscious for minutes. He convulsed for the first two minutes of the execution and breathed heavily for minutes afterwards. Eventually, the breathing stopped. The execution took 22 minutes.
Nevertheless, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall reported after the execution that nitrogen hypoxia has now been proven “an effective and humane” method. Smith’s death has reignited debates over capital punishment and whether or not this new method of execution is humane. Something else struck me more from Marshall’s statement the night of the execution that I want to leave readers on: “Justice has been served.”
How someone defines justices influences almost every aspect of their ethical views. Because there are many definitions and applications of justice, next week I’ll focus on justice related to punishment and how to look at it from a Catholic perspective.
Further Reading:
“Alabama executes a man with nitrogen gas, the first time the new method has been used”
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