On Jan. 25, Kenneth Eugene Smith was the first person in Alabama, indeed the first person in the United States, to be executed by nitrogen gas hypoxia. This was Alabama's second crack at Smith, who was convicted of a 1988 murder-for-hire. He had been the subject of a botched execution in 2022 that was called off after he spent four hours on a gurney while the authorities tried unsuccessfully to correct an IV line.