CNN: Alabama on Thursday night executed Kenneth Smith, the first death row inmate known to die by nitrogen gas, marking the emergence of a wholly new method of execution in the United States that experts have said could lead to excessive pain or even torture.Smith, who was sentenced to death for his role in a 1988 murder for hire, had survived the state’s initial attempt to execute him by lethal injection in 2022. Earlier Thursday, the US Supreme Court denied his last-minute appeal to halt the e