Kenneth Eugene Smith is set to become the first person in the US to be executed by nitrogen gas.
The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights last week said the never-before-used method could amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and called for a halt.
A final appeal ruling is still outstanding after a federal court rejected his lawyers’ request for an injunction. Smith is due to be executed on Thursday.
Smith was one of two men convicted in 1989 of murdering a preacher’s wife, Elizabeth Sennett, who was stabbed and beaten to death in a $1,000 (£786) killing-for-hire.
He is one of the only men in modern America to be taken twice for execution – having survived the state’s previous lethal injection attempt in 2022.
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