Alabama fails to complete lethal injection for 3rd time

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama started and then stopped another lethal injection because prison workers were unable to establish the intravenous lines needed to administer a deadly dose.

The problem was the latest in an unprecedented string of failures of the state’s capital punishment procedure. The uncompleted execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith late Thursday was the state’s second such instance of being unable to kill an inmate in the past two months and its third since 2018.

The state completed an execution in July, but only after a three-hour delay caused by the same problem.

A leader of an anti-death penalty group says something has clearly gone wrong with the state’s execution procedure.

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