Thursday, January 25, 2024
Nitrogen's Dance
Alabama, oh land of tales,
Where life and death incite the scales.
A pioneer, they now proclaim,
For executing with nitrogen's name.
Kenneth Smith, the man in wait,
Faced with his ultimate fate.
Convicted of a heinous crime,
His time has come, the march of time.
Masked head laid upon a gurney,
A dance begins, peculiar journey.
Nitrogen, a gas so pure,
Unleashing its lethal allure.
Oxygen fades, darkness grows,
As nitrogen's flow ominously flows.
With each gasp, life's grip released,
The prisoner's soul, forever ceased.
Death penalty opponents cry,
Unproven method, they decry.
But courts have ruled, time and again,
To let this dance of death begin.
Tonight, Alabama takes a chance,
In executing through nitrogen's dance.
A headline in the annals of history,
Marking a shift in death's dark mystery.
And so, the gas will softly fall,
Watching as the curtain will call.
A single breath, a final sigh,
As nitrogen claims its soulful prize.
Alas, a second attempt to kill,
A lethal injection's bitter pill.
A vein elusive, time expired,
But nitrogen waits, again desired.
In Alabama, a solemn night,
Eying the clock, no turning back in sight.
For history is made with each life lost,
At any cost, the price is the cost.
Alabama's dance with nitrogen's might,
A new frontier in the dead of night.
For better or worse, time will tell,
If this tale ends in heaven or hell.
![Read the story](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/01/25/multimedia/25nat-alabama-execution-hbwg/25nat-alabama-execution-hbwg-facebookJumbo.jpg)