The impending execution of killer Kenneth Eugene Smith with untested nitrogen has brought America’s controversial capital punishment system back into sharp focus.
Smith will be gassed to death with nitrogen hypoxia tomorrow at 6pm in Atmore, Alabama, after the US Supreme Court denied his appeal.
It will be the first execution of its kind in the US and first known nitrogen execution in the world.
But Smith’s demise will be just the latest in a long line of officially sanctioned killings in the United States.
The 2000 hit film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel the Green Mile, which featured a horrifying electric chair execution scene, was loosely based on the real case of 14-year-old George Stinney, who was electrocuted for the murders of two girls in 1944.
In 1928, housewife Ruth Snyder was executed by the same method after murdering her husband with her lover. Incredibly, a photographer took a secret picture of the moment of her death using a camera strapped to his ankle.
Hellbound and Down 