There was no good way for Alabama to execute Kenneth Eugene Smith

The outrage over Alabama using the previously untested method of nitrogen gas to execute 58-year-old Kenneth Eugene Smith on Thursday night isn’t misplaced. The use of any human being as a “guinea pig” for a method of execution, in the words of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, makes the blood boil.  But there’s a chance that the focus on Smith, whom Alabama tried and failed to kill in 2022, will distract attention from the much larger outrage: that our country is still pulling human beings from cages and killing them.

Not killing them because they’re threatening someone else. Not killing them in the interest of public safety. But killing them based on the flimsy idea that executions foster closure for victims’ families and deter future crimes. Killing them to avoid being attacked as soft on crime. Killing them in the service of a vengeance that can never be satisfied. Especially not, as was the case Thursday, when this punishment for Elizabeth Sennett’s murderer came more than 35 years after his crime.