On Monday, Attorney General Steve Marshall told reporters in a press conference in Montgomery, “As far as I and my office are concerned, there is no moratorium (on executions), nor will there be.”
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey in November asked the attorney general’s office not to schedule any more executions until a review was conducted of what went wrong in the botched execution of Kenny Smith, where the state failed to kill Smith by lethal injection.
“I have not spoken with the Governor,” Marshall said. “I am not objecting to the review, but I am also saying that there is a time limit on the review.”
Marshall said there was no moratorium and chastised the media for calling it a moratorium.
Marshall explained that when the state obtains an order for an execution, it has to be carried out within a 24-hour period, but the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) narrows that down to a six-hour window. That rule has been in place for years, long before Marshall or Ivey were in office.
Marshall said that the review should be “expedited quickly.”
Ivey ordered the review on November 21 after ADOC’s employees failed to find a vein to execute the murderer on November 17.
“I look forward to having a conversation with the governor about this,” Marshall said. “But to me, it is a very discrete and limited investigation.”
Marshall called the failed Kenny Smith execution “a travesty” because the victim’s family had waited 35 years for justice. “Almost half of Alabama’s population was not even born yet,” Marshall commented.
Marshall laid the blame “at the feet of the inmates and their lawyers.”
Marshall said that his attorneys were forced to respond to the “frivolous claims” of Smith’s attorneys before the Supreme Court, which took time, and that Smith resisted efforts by ADOC employees to insert the needle into the vein.
“Much of that coverage has been sympathetic to Smith,” Marshall said, chastising the liberal media and dismissing Smith’s attorney’s claims that he was tortured in the botched execution attempt.
Marshall said, “A cold-blooded killer complained about the prodding and poking. He is the monster.”
Marshall and his accomplice, John Forrest Parker, were each paid $1000 to kill Elizabeth Sennett by her husband. Parker was executed in 2010.
“She stabbed her six times with a six-inch survival knife,” Marshall said. “And then was beaten to a pulp so that her friends and family could not recognize her.”
Marshall said, “Smith has succeeded only in postponing, not escaping that just punishment.”
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