Executioners in Idaho on Wednesday abandoned their attempt to perform lethal injections on one of the nation’s longest-serving death row inmates after repeated attempts to tap a vein were unsuccessful.

Public defenders representing the inmate, Thomas Eugene Creech, and witnesses said officials attempted to insert needles into each of Mr. Creech’s limbs before abandoning the attempt. Mr Creech’s death sentence expired at the end of the day and he was returned to his cell.

It was Idaho’s first execution attempt in more than a decade.

The bust was the latest in a series of botched executions across the country, often due to executioners having trouble finding veins. Under legal pressure, some states have explored alternatives, including nitrogen gas, and Idaho is one of several states that recently approved the use of firing squads to carry out the death penalty.

After the botched execution, Mr. Creech’s lawyers filed a motion in federal court to halt further efforts to execute him and denounced the failures of the Idaho Department of Correction.

“We are angry but not surprised that the state of Idaho botched the execution of Thomas Creech today,” the attorneys said in a statement.

Mr Creech, 73, was convicted of five murders and suspected of others. He served 50 years in prison and was sentenced to death in 1983 for the murder of David Jensen, a fellow inmate whom Mr Creech attacked with a sock full of batteries.

Mr. Creech’s lawyers had tried unsuccessfully to prevent his execution, arguing in part that it was unconstitutional to kill Mr. Creech because he had been convicted by a judge and not a jury. Hours before his execution was to take place, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his remaining appeals.

The state began executing Mr. Creech at 10 a.m. Witnesses said medical workers used vein finders, hot compresses and blood pressure cuffs to access the veins. They tried putting an IV in his arms first and then moving to his legs. At one point, a member of the medical team left the room to bring in more supplies.

Josh Tewalt, the director of the Idaho Department of Correction, said the medical team conducted an examination and believed it could achieve access to a vein. But the team later concluded there were problems with “vein quality,” he said.

Mr. Tewalt praised the team for its efforts. “Our first goal is to conduct this with dignity, professionalism and respect,” he said.

Media witnesses said that nearly an hour after the execution, Creech reported that his legs “were a little sore,” which the state attributed to cramps. Soon after, Mr. Tewalt consulted with the medical team and determined that an IV line could not be established, officials said. The state says it is considering next steps.

The failure came about a month after officials in Alabama, which had a series of botched lethal injections in 2022, executed a prisoner with nitrogen gas, the first time the method had been used in capital punishment in the United States. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said the execution was “humane and effective.” But witnesses said the inmate, Kenneth Smith, shook and writhed for several minutes as the gas was administered.

A growing number of states have banned the death penalty, while others have had difficulty enforcing their execution schedules because they have been unable to obtain lethal drugs. Idaho was one of those states, although it was able to acquire the drugs after the Legislature passed a law in 2022 protecting the identities of those who supply them.

Mr. Tewalt said he could not say what the state would do next. While the firing squad was an option under Idaho law, he said the state does not yet have the capabilities to implement that. “We will continue to work on these efforts,” he said. He added that a change in state law is needed to make nitrogen gas an option.

“In terms of determining when to request a new death sentence, whether to request a new death sentence, these are discussions that need to happen in the coming days,” Mr. Tewalt said.

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.

It was November 17, 2022, and Kenneth Smith lay on a stretcher in the Alabama execution chamber, his arms and legs bound, as he waited to be put to death. Mr Smith, who had been on death row for more than a quarter of a century after being convicted of murdering a woman, recalled thanking God for the last week he was alive and thinking of his family.

At the time, the state used the same execution method used in the vast majority of modern American executions: lethal injection. And like many other states, Alabama had problems. That night, a team of people repeatedly tried and failed to place an intravenous line in Mr. Smith's arms and hands, eventually reaching a vein near his heart. The stinging stopped — according to his lawyers, who recounted in court papers Mr. Smith's experiences that evening — when prison officials decided they might not have time to carry out the execution before the death sentence expired at midnight.

Now, more than a year later, Alabama is once again preparing for Mr. Smith's execution this week, this time using a method never used in an American execution: nitrogen hypoxia. Under this method, which is used in assisted suicide in Europe, Mr Smith will be fitted with a mask and administered a stream of nitrogen gas, effectively depriving him of oxygen until he dies.

The execution, scheduled for Thursday evening, is the latest twist in the fraught battle over executions in the US, where a growing number of states are banning the death penalty; those who retain the punishment find it difficult to carry it out. Pressure from activist and medical groups has made it challenging for prison officials to obtain lethal drugs, and a series of executions in the past two years have been plagued by problems finding veins. Alabama is one of several states exploring alternatives, including nitrogen hypoxia, and some states have recently authorized the use of a firing squad.

This week's scheduled execution has galvanized death penalty critics who say Alabama prison officials are making Mr. Smith a test subject for an unproven and potentially macabre experiment. State officials claim that death from nitrogen hypoxia is painless because it causes a person to quickly lose consciousness. They note that Mr. Smith's lawyers themselves have determined that nitrogen hypoxia is preferable to Alabama's burdensome administration of lethal injection drugs.

Last week, a federal judge in Alabama spoke a request rejected by Mr. Smith's lawyers to halt the execution. Mr. Smith has appealed, and the case will most likely continue before the U.S. Supreme Court, which in recent years has been reluctant to halt executions at the last minute.

Mr Smith, who responded to written questions by email, said he was concerned the process could go wrong.

“I'm afraid we've told Alabama that these risks can happen — will happen — just as we warned them last year,” he said. “And they will do nothing to prevent these dangers from happening.”

The details of how the proceedings are expected to unfold are laid out in a 40-page protocol document Alabama released last summer, the public version of which is heavily redacted.

What is known is that Mr. Smith will be led from his cell at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility to the prison's death chamber. The complex is in Atmore, Ala., about 60 miles northeast of Mobile, and five reporters are allowed to witness the execution. Mr Smith is placed on a stretcher and a mask is placed over his face, after which he is given two minutes to say his final words. Then the prison guard or an assistant will begin pumping the gas into Mr. Smith's mask for at least 15 minutes.

Few people have an intimate knowledge of what a nitrogen hypoxia execution might look like. However, one of them is Dr. Philip Nitschke, a pioneer in assisted suicide, who recently invented a capsule that fills with nitrogen so people can end their lives.

Dr. Nitschke estimates he has witnessed at least 50 deaths from nitrogen hypoxia. He was called by Mr. Smith's lawyers in December to testify during their efforts to block the execution, and he met with Mr. Smith. After visiting the execution chamber in Alabama and examining the mask that will be used by the state in Mr. Smith's death, Dr. Nitschke said in an interview that he could imagine scenarios ranging from a quick and painless death to death with significant suffering if the situation arose. going wrong.

He said the major difference between Alabama's protocols and those of its assisted suicide in Europe and Australia lies in Alabama's plan to use a mask. He said it would create a greater chance of a leak – which would let in oxygen and prolong the process – than a chamber, capsule or plastic bag.

“I'm worried about Kenny, and I just don't know which way things are going to go,” said Dr. Nitschke about Mr. Smith, who he said seemed very nervous when the two met.

“What he would have liked to hear from me,” said Dr. Nitschke, “was that this would work well.” But, he said, he didn't feel he could promise Mr. Smith that much. Instead, he viewed Alabama's protocols as a “quick and nasty” attempt at nitrogen hypoxia, ignoring the potential dangers of vomiting and air leakage.

During the execution, Mr.'s spiritual advisor will be in the room. Smith present, Rev. Jeff Hood, who lives in Little Rock, Ark. He started in November with Mr. Smith developed what he describes as a close bond, and planned to be present during the performance.

Mr. Hood said in an interview that he feared what Mr. Smith would have to endure, and he raised the possibility that Mr. Smith might physically resist the execution attempt.

“This is not going to be a peaceful experiment,” Mr Hood said, adding: “I think it's important that people realize that if you tie someone up like that, you can't expect someone to suffocate – suffocate to death – for no reason. to resist.”

Mr. Hood said he also worried about his own safety and noted that prison officials needed him to sign a waiver that warns of the potential dangers of nitrogen and to keep a distance of one meter from Mr Smith while wearing the mask.

Mr. Smith is executed for the 1988 stabbing murder of Elizabeth Sennett, following testimony that Mrs. Sennett's husband, a minister, had offered to pay Mr. Smith and two other men $1,000 each to kill her. (The preacher, Charles Sennett Sr., later committed suicide.) The jurors who convicted Mr. Smith voted 11 to 1 to spare his life and instead sentence him to life in prison, but a judge overruled them and sentenced him to death. In 2017, Alabama no longer allowed judges to overrule death penalty juries in such a manner, and such rulings are no longer allowed anywhere in the United States.

Mr Smith said he did not believe it was the judge's right to overrule the jury's verdict in his case. Since the failed execution attempt, Mr. Smith said, he had suffered from severe anxiety and depression.

For Ms Sennett's sons, the execution cannot come soon enough – especially after the failed attempt in 2022 – and they have said the new method caused them little concern.

“Some of these people say, 'Well, he doesn't have to suffer like this,'” one son, Charles Sennett Jr., said told WAAY 31 television station. “Well, he didn't ask Mom how to suffer. They just did it. They stabbed her several times.”

Mr Sennett said he and other family members planned to attend the execution.

Another son, Michael Sennett, told NBC News last month that he was frustrated that the state had taken so long to carry out an execution that the judge had ordered decades ago.

“I don't care how he gets out, as long as he gets out,” he said, noting that Mr. Smith had “spent twice as long in prison as long as I've known my mother.”

A slew of botched executions in Alabama, including that of Mr. Smith, prompted the state's governor, Kay Ivey, a Republican, to order a temporary pause in executions while prison officials reviewed their procedures. Ms. Ivey lifted the pause after a few months, with prison officials describing some minor changes and a new rule that gives the state more time to carry out executions.

Since executions resumed, the state has killed two death row inmates and has not had the kind of problems that plagued previous attempts.

Polls consistently show that a small majority of Americans support the death penalty, with a sharp divide along political lines. Most Republicans (81 percent) and only 32 percent of Democrats support the death penalty for people convicted of murder. one Gallup poll last year.

Still, the number of executions has declined significantly since the modern peak of 98 in 1999. Last year, states executed 24 people, and the federal government has played an increasing role in recent years. The Trump administration has put 13 people to death by lethal injection, the first executions by the federal government since George W. Bush was president.

Last week, the Justice Department under President Joe Biden, who campaigned on ending the federal death penalty, said it would seek the death penalty against a white gunman who killed 10 Black people in a racist attack on a Buffalo supermarket.

Anna Betts reporting contributed.