Supreme Court Rejects Alabama Death Row Inmate’s Plea to Halt Gas Execution

The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to stay the execution of an Alabama inmate by nitrogen hypoxia, an untested method that experts have warned could cause him extreme pain and suffering.

Should a separate appeal still pending in federal court not pan out the way advocates and his legal team hope, Kenneth Eugene Smith will be the first person in the United States to be lethally suffocated by nitrogen gas on Thursday evening.

A terse court order noted that both Smith’s application for a stay and his petition for a writ of certiorari—a request for the high court to take up his case—had been denied. No justices publicly dissented from the order.

Read more at The Daily Beast.