‘Textbook’ Execution or Botched One? Alabama Case Leaves Sides Divided.

A day after Alabama became the first state to execute a prisoner with nitrogen gas, officials vowed on Friday to continue using the method in executions despite witnesses’ accounts that the prisoner 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, on Thursday night.

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

“Alabama has done it, and now so can you,” Mr. Marshall said, addressing his counterparts across the country. “And we stand ready to assist you in implementing this method in your states.”

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

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