Alabama Set to Execute Man After Jury Recommends Life In Prison
If Kenneth Eugene Smith is put to death Thursday, he will be the first executed under judicial override in a death penalty case since Alabama became the last state in the country to abolish the practice in 2017.
Landwebs
On Thursday evening, Kenneth Eugene Smith, 57 is set to be executed by way of lethal injection in Southern Alabama for the 1988 killing of a preacher’s wife, Elizabeth Sennett, in Colbert County, Alabama. Smith was paid $1000 for the murder by the victims husband, reports Kim Chandler for the Associated Press. The other man hired to kill Sennett, John Forrest Parker, was executed in 2010.
The jury that convicted Smith recommended a life sentence back in 1996, but the judge overseeing the case overrode the jury’s determination and sentenced Smith to death in a practice called judicial override that Alabama became the last state in the country to ban for death penalty cases in 2017. The law was not retroactive, and the Equal Justice Initiative notes that if he is put to death, Smith will be the first man executed under judicial override in the state since.
