Smith confessed to the 1988 murder of Elizabeth Sennett and was duly convicted of the crime. Yet his death sentence warrants commutation for reasons beyond philosophical opposition to the death penalty, as advocated in my email to Governor Kay Ivey.
Governor Ivey,
Please commute the death sentence of Kenneth Smith to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
While Mr. Smith confessed and was duly convicted of the murder of Elizabeth Sennett, a jury of his peers recommended a life sentence, 11 to 1. The judge for the case disregarded the jury’s wishes and imposed the death penalty. The use of judicial override has since been repealed by the Alabama legislature, although this grace was not extended to Mr. Smith.
This is not justice and calls for your intervention.
Former Alabama governors Robert Bentley and Don Siegelman, from both political parties, have urged an end to executions where the jury was not unanimous or the judge overruled the jury’s recommendation.
Grace for Mr. Smith is further compelled by the state’s failed attempt to execute him in 2022, now compounded by the planned use of nitrogen hypoxia for this next attempt on January 25. As you well know, Mr. Smith would be the first prisoner in the U.S. to be executed using nitrogen hypoxia, an experimental and unproven procedure that is clearly unusual and arguably cruel.
Commuting Mr. Smith’s death sentence to life would be a tangible application of God’s grace: honoring Elizabeth Sennett and her family while ensuring a just and fair punishment for Kenneth Smith.
Respectfully,
