JACKSON, Miss.—Jeff Hood vividly remembers witnessing the execution of convicted killer Kenneth Eugene Smith, the first American prisoner on death row executed using nitrogen gas.
As Smith lay strapped to a gurney, Alabama prison officials placed a mask over his face that Hood thought looked like a mask a firefighter would wear.
A jury convicted Smith in the murder-for-hire killing of Elizabeth Sennett, whose husband had orchestrated the plot, in 1989. Although a jury recommended a life sentence for Smith, a trial judge overruled that decision and decided that Smith deserved the maximum penalty: death.
On the morning of Jan. 25, 2024, minutes before Smith was set to die, Hood—an Old Catholic Church priest from Arkansas—delivered his last rites. Once executioners secured Smith’s face mask, they turned on the gas while Hood, members of the media and prison staff looked on.
Smith’s body convulsed as he suffocated.
“As soon as the gas hit his face, he started heaving—back and forth and back and forth—violently. All of his veins popped up. It looked like there were a million ants under his skin going in every single direction,” Hood said while speaking in Jackson on Wednesday.
While Smith succumbed to the poison, Hood’s eyes welled up with tears.
‘Folks On Death Row Are Human Beings’
Although the execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith was not the first execution of a death row inmate that Hood had witnessed, he said it was “by far the most horrific thing” he has ever seen.
“It was a horror show,” the reverend, who has made it his life’s mission to advocate against capital punishment, said Wednesday. Hood, co-founder of the Execution Intervention Project, traveled from Arkansas to Jackson on May 28, joining Mississippi prison reform advocate Mitzi Magleby for a press conference outside the Mississippi Supreme Court.
The two called on the State to halt the execution of Richard Gerald Jordan, Mississippi’s longest-serving death row inmate.
“It’s important for us to remember that these folks on death row are human beings,” Hood said. “What is killing him going to do for our society?”
A jury convicted Jordan of capital murder for the 1976 kidnapping and shooting death of Edwina Marter, a woman whom he originally abducted in an attempt to collect ransom from her husband, Gulfport banker Charles Marter.
At the time of her death, Edwina Marter was the mother of two children, ages 2 and 9. “She was a stay-at-home mom and she took care of us,” Edwina Marter’s son Eric told the Biloxi Sun Herald in 2015.
“She was always there for us. But ours wasn’t a normal childhood with a mom and dad because of this,” he said.
While Hood and Magleby shared condolences to Marter’s family on Wednesday, they said they do not believe Jordan’s execution will serve the cause of justice.
“I don’t believe we have to murder to atone a murder. I just don’t,” Magleby, who became overwhelmed with emotion, told reporters on Wednesday.
‘Let Him Live’
Richard Gerald Jordan has never claimed to be innocent in the kidnapping and murder of Edwina Marter, but he has repeatedly challenged the death penalty, seeking numerous appeals. After the initial sentencing, he faced trial again three different times.
On May 1, 2025, the Mississippi Supreme Court set his execution date, saying that he had exhausted all legal challenges to prevent the execution, though his attorneys argue that he has not. Unless something changes, the State will execute Jordan for Marter’s death on June 25.
Mississippi law allows death sentences to be carried out using lethal injection, nitrogen gas, electrocution or firing squad. The state has not yet said how Jordan will die.
Magleby and Hood believe that Jordan, now nearly 80, is no longer a threat to society and that he has paid his debt for his crimes.
“I’m advocating to let him live. If it is in prison for the rest of his days, so be it,” Magleby said. “I’m advocating for him not to die. He doesn’t need to die. I don’t see that that’s a solution to any problem.”
