A state correctional official stated Thursday night that the execution of Alabama death row inmate Kenneth Smith had been postponed due to time constraints brought on by a late-night legal battle.
According to a statement from the Alabama Department of Corrections, the execution was aborted at around 11:20 p.m. local time “due to the time constraints resulting from the lateness of the court’s proceedings.”
For his part in the 1988 murder of Elizabeth Sennett, Smith was initially scheduled to die at 6 p.m. CT, but the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals granted him a stay of execution just hours before his death warrant was due to expire at midnight.
The state then submitted an urgent appeal to the US Supreme Court, which handed down its ruling less than two hours prior to Smith’s death warrant’s expiration, vacating the lower court’s judgement and allowing the state to carry out the execution.
The Court’s order made note that the emergency appeal would have been upheld by the three liberal justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson even though it did not address the appeal in detail.