The Death Penalty Information Center

Jurors in 1994 recommended by a 9-3 vote that Rocky Myers be spared the death penalty and serve life in prison. A judge sentenced him to die anyway. Myers is now one of nearly three dozen inmates on Alabama's death row who were placed there under a now-abolished system that allowed judges to override a jury's recommendation in death penalty case.

Witnesses, including five news reporters, watched through a window, Kenneth Eugene Smith, who was convicted and sentenced to die in the 1988 murder-for hire slaying of Elizabeth Sennett, convulsed on a gurney as Alabama carried out the nation's first execution using nitrogen gas.

A man put to death using nitrogen gas shook and convulsed for minutes on the gurney as Alabama carried out the first-of-its-kind execution that has ignited debate over the humaneness of the method.

Alabama is just over a day away from the first ever execution using nitrogen gas. Kenneth Eugene Smith is on death row for the murder for hire of a preacher’s wife in 1988. The State wants to use a face mask on the inmate to pump in nitrogen until he dies of suffocation. Alabama claims the process is painless. The non-profit, non-partisan, criminal justice journalism organization The Marshall Project calls it experimental.

The United Nations is expressing alarm over this month’s planned execution of Kenneth Smith. The death row inmate is scheduled to die by what’s called nitrogen hypoxia. Smith’s execution would be the first of its kind in the nation.

An Alabama inmate scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection for the shooting death of his friend's father urged young people to take a pause before making life-altering mistakes.

James Barber will be Alabama’s first death row inmate set for execution since last year.