January 28, 2024

The spiritual advisor for convicted hitman Kenneth Eugene Smith accompanied him into the chamber, where he witnessed what he called ‘the most horrific thing’ he’d ever seen done to another human

Smith – who survived a botched lethal injection attempt in 2022 – was accompanied to the gas chamber by his spiritual advisor, Reverend Dr Jeff Hood. Rev Hood described how he watched the 58-year-old killer writhe around like a “fish out of water” while his eyes bulged.

Here, in the reverend’s own words, he tells of his haunting, traumatising experience as he watched Smith die after anointing his head with holy oil.

I go into the execution chamber, and one of the first things that I realize was what the oxygen meters were saying. The oxygen meters, when I went in for orientation the other day, were at 22%, which makes sense because air is like 78% nitrogen. When I was going into the chamber, it was 25.4%, which means that they were pumping extra oxygen into the chamber — so that was kind of how they managed that.

“I immediately notice that Kenny has on a mask that extended from the top of his forehead to underneath his chin. It looked like a firefighter’s mask, and it was super tight. There were sorts of straps everywhere. It felt like I was looking at Bane from Batman. That’s what it felt like — it was a super gnarly, intense mask. There were strings going from the mask to the gurney.

“There were two corrections officers and a woman by the name of Cynthia Stewart Reilly, who is in charge of male prisons in Alabama. They were all sort of nonchalant-looking when all of this was happening.

Hood stands with Smith as the two pose for a final picture together before his execution

(Image: Courtesy o Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood)

“Kenny, of course, gave his last words. I was, the whole time, going back and forth with Kenny. I put my hand over my heart to let him know that I loved him. He was talking to me, letting me know that he loved me. It was really powerful.
“At this point, the curtains were still shut, so the witnesses can’t see anything. As the curtains were opened, I was allowed to go up and make the sign of the cross on his leg. I did that, and he, again, repeatedly telling me how much he loved me and how thankful he was that I was there. Obviously, that was incredibly touching to me.
“Then, he looked at the room where his family was. He kept telling them how much he loved them. He gave his last words, and then the execution started.
“When the execution started, based on what the state said, I was expecting him to go unconscious in seconds. Well, as soon as the nitrogen hit, he began to convulse, and he didn’t stop convulsing for minutes. I know that by some accounts, it was two or three minutes.

He said the entire procedure lasted 22 minutes. That’s Lee Hedgepeth, who spoke at the press conference last night.

“It looked like a fish out of water. He kept heaving back and forth, back and forth. And the mask was tied to the gurney, and so every time he heaved forward, his face was hitting the front of the mask and pressing into the mask.

“His eyes started to bulge. He began to turn colors. He was spitting, and mucus was coming out of his mouth and his face. He kept almost hitting his face on the front of the mask.

“The mucus and saliva was hitting the front of the mask, and it was drizzling down the front of the mask. His whole body was seizing. It was absolutely, positively a horror show.

“It was so intense that the expressions of the corrections officers and Ms. Stewart Reilly dramatically changed from the nonchalant facial expressions that they had to real looks of concern.

Hood described the mask as being a tight fit, uncomfortably tight, and then said mucus and saliva from Smith coated the insides as he died

(Image: Getty Images)

“One of the reasons why I feel very comfortable calling Mr. Hamm [Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm] a liar, calling the attorney general [Steve Marshall] a liar, is because they know, based on the reactions in that room, that this was not a success, this was not what they thought it would be, this is not something that happened in seconds. This was something that was torture, cruel and unusual punishment, for minutes and minutes.

“Cynthia Stewart Reilly, she had on women’s dress shoes, and she kept on tapping her feet out of nervousness. It was almost as if she was tap dancing in the execution chamber. It was one of the noises that I kept hearing was her tapping her feet.

“It was just an unbelievably intense situation. I was crying my eyeballs out. I had my hand on the space behind me. The longer it went, I kept thinking in my head, ‘How long is this going to last? How long are we going to have to watch this s**t?’

“On a personal level, I felt an unbelievable sense of guilt that there was nothing I could do to stop it. I felt like I needed to tell Kenny that I was sorry that I couldn’t stop it. I think that comes from a couple of spaces, but … as an activist, I felt guilty that I couldn’t stop it beforehand. In the chamber, I felt just completely powerless.

“Witnessing a murder, a horror show like that, it’s horrible. The tears were running down my face.

“When it finally became apparent that he at least appeared to be deceased, they were waiting on a flatline from the EKG. My face went from just complete sadness and horror to absolute rage that the state of Alabama thought that it was morally appropriate to suffocate someone to death, to torture someone to death, in that manner.

“The tube that was coming out of the control center was a very thin tube. It actually looks like something that would have come out of plastic plumbing that kind of extends, except it was clear. The more he heaved, and the more he looked like a fish out of water, swinging back and forth, the more I was concerned that that tube was going to bust, or at least break, so there was that concern for my safety.

“I kept on wringing my hands. I couldn’t figure out what to do with my hands. You know when you rub your hands so hard you feel like you’re going to rub your hands off when something horrible is happening like you’re going to lose a finger at any moment? All of this happens, and I am eventually escorted out of the chamber.

“The state of Alabama does not send a doctor into the chamber to declare a time of death in front of the witnesses because they’re scared that the doctor will be revealed. In this circumstance, I was taken out of the chamber, and the reason that’s so important is nobody knows the exact time of death. We just have to trust the commissioner to come out and say the time of death.

“This is a state that says, ‘Trust us,’ but they are consistently not being honest and not telling the truth. I think it is very possible — I’m not saying this for certain — I think it is very possible that we could have left that room and Kenny [would] still be alive. We would have never known. We would have no idea.

“All we could tell was it didn’t look like he was breathing. It looked like he was unconscious. But there was no way for us to know that because there was no doctor in the space. There was no doctor who came out and declared a time of death.

Then, what happens is I am escorted down the hallway. On my right, as I was walking down the hallway, I saw the doctor, and he was very shocked and upset that I saw him because he was trying to hide. And the reason he was trying to hide is because he could lose his medical license for participating in that.

“It just shows that there are so many secrets and so many crimes and so many just horrific things that happened last night, and I hope that the state of Alabama is held accountable for the horror that they perpetuated.

“These state officials are obviously chicken hawks. They are all about executions. They’re hawks on executions, making those things happen. But they are too chicken to be present, to take any sort of responsibility, for what’s happening. They’re not in the execution chamber. They are not pushing the mechanisms.

“They’re cowards. They are all about talking about these executions and how they want them to continue and all this kind of fluster, but they are too chicken to participate in them themselves. They sit up in Montgomery, and they talk about how it was successful and this and that, but they’re never there.

They’re forcing the corrections officers to do this stuff, and there’s no doubt from what I saw last night that it has an unbelievable, detrimental effect on them.

“I was a trauma chaplain for a while, so I’ve seen people [who went through] car accidents and burn victims. I’ve seen, unfortunately, all sorts of horrific things — [including] four executions last year. This is the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen done to a human being, by far.

This was, again, a fish out of water. It was someone heaving over and over and over again, and in a viewing chamber where there were state officials, corrections officers, people who could have stopped it. And it just kept going. It wouldn’t stop.

“To say that this was successful… It’s just insane that they keep on saying that. Nobody that saw that would say that was a success, unless you consider a success to just be killing somebody.

“If a success is something that doesn’t violate the Eighth Amendment, if a success is something that’s moral — if this is a success, then they have a very different understanding of morality, any of these things.”