'Textbook' performance or a botched one? Alabama Case leaves the sides divided.

A day after Alabama became the first state to execute an inmate with nitrogen gas, officials vowed Friday to continue using the method in executions, despite witness reports that the inmate writhed on the gurney for at least two minutes.

Two very different accounts of the execution emerged from the state's death chamber in Atmore, Ala., where the state executed Kenneth Smith, 58, Thursday evening.

The state's attorney general, Steve Marshall, called it a “textbook” execution that had made nitrogen hypoxia, as the trial is known, a “proven” method for other states to emulate.

“Alabama did it, and now you can do it too,” Mr. Marshall said, addressing colleagues across the country. “And we stand ready to help you implement this method in your country.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Smith's spiritual adviser and reporters who also witnessed the execution described an intense reaction in which Mr. Smith shook and writhed violently as the gas was administered, began breathing heavily and eventually stopped moving.

The descriptions contradicted what the state had promised in court papers: that the untested method of using nitrogen gas through a face mask would “rapidly reduce the oxygen level in the mask, ensuring unconsciousness in seconds.”

“It was horrible,” said Deborah Denno, an expert on execution methods at Fordham University Law School. “Pain for two to four minutes, especially if you're talking about someone choking — that's a very long period and a torturous period.”

Mr. Marshall gave the go-ahead for prison officials to begin pumping nitrogen into Mr. Smith's mask at 7:56 p.m., about a minute before witnesses reported the inmate began writhing uncontrollably.

Lee Hedgepeth, a reporter in Alabama who witnessed the execution, wrote a detailed account of his observations in which he said that at 7.57pm Mr Smith 'began hitting the straps' on the stretcher, 'his whole body and head jerking violently back and forth for several minutes.'

Then, Mr. Hedgepeth wrote, Mr. Smith began panting, and by 8 p.m. he was still gasping for air, his body pulling on the restraints with each gasp, albeit less forcefully.

Criticism of the execution poured in from all over the world from organizations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the European Union and Amnesty International. The White House press secretary said the Biden administration was “deeply disturbed” by the stories of Mr. Smith's death.

Mr. Marshall said 43 other inmates currently on death row in the state have opted for the nitrogen hypoxia method under a law passed several years ago that allowed them to choose that method over lethal injection. The state has notoriously bungled a series of lethal injections, including an attempt to execute Mr. Smith in 2022.

He was one of three men convicted in 1988 of murdering a woman, Elizabeth Sennett, whose pastor husband had recruited them to kill her.

“I think we will definitely have more nitrogen hypoxia executions in Alabama,” Mr. Marshall said.

Over the past 15 years, states have struggled with an embarrassing series of botched executions and the increasing difficulty of obtaining the drugs needed for lethal injections. Some have considered the pros and cons of older methods such as electrocution and firing squads, while others have seen more promise in new drug cocktails or nitrogen hypoxia, which asphyxiates the prisoner by replacing the air with pure nitrogen.

Still other states, including New Hampshire, Colorado and Virginia, have abolished the death penalty entirely. (A total of 27 states and the federal government have the death penalty.) Although a majority of Americans still approve of the death penalty, support for it has declined from 80 percent in 1994 to the mid-1950s in recent years. according to Gallup. Last November, Gallup found that half of Americans believe the death penalty is unfair, an all-time high.

Experts say support for the death penalty declines when executions fail or methods are considered unusual or inhumane.

Alabama is one of three states — Oklahoma and Mississippi are the others — that have allowed the use of nitrogen in executions. Although the gas has been used in physician-assisted suicides, Alabama's chosen method — administering the gas through a mask — differs from common practice and has raised concerns that a leak could endanger others in the death chamber could bring; that Mr. Smith could throw up in his mask; or that oxygen could mix with the nitrogen.

Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said Mr Smith's death in no way established the reliability of the method, and that human error is always a factor. “The risk is baked into this procedure and there is no way to know if it will be like this next time, if it will be worse or better,” she said.

She added that she didn't think other states would follow suit. “I hope and expect that other states will not want to take the risks that Alabama has taken on,” she said.

One state considering this is Nebraska, where the legislature abolished the death penalty in 2015 but voters restored it in a referendum the following year. Soon after, the state saw its supply of lethal injection drugs run out and was unable to carry out executions.

“Given the outcome of the Alabama case, we are confident that this will be a hotly debated bill in our state,” said Sen. Loren Lippincott, a Republican and sponsor of a bill that would authorize the use of nitrogen, in a written statement . . “If given this option, we are confident that the Nebraska Department of Corrections will use this method to humanely provide justice to the victims' families and to our community.”

The Rev. Jeff Hood, an Arkansas pastor who was the spiritual adviser in the execution chamber with Mr. Smith, disputed the idea that the execution had gone as officials expected.

He said he saw prison officials in the room who “seemed visibly surprised at how bad this case had gone.”

Experts said it was almost a rule that execution methods billed as humane or painless turn out to be far more complicated – either intrinsically, as in the use of cyanide gas, or due to human error. Autopsies and execution logs have repeatedly shown that executed prisoners were not given enough anesthetic to render them unconscious.

There will always be a debate about the experience of executions and how much prisoners like Mr Smith suffered, Ms Maher of the Death Penalty Information Center pointed out.

“The only person who could tell us about that is dead now,” she said.