Alabama execution set for man involved in murder-for-hire of preacher's wife

The state of Alabama has set a date for the execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith, for his part in the 1988 murder-for-hire of a preacher's wife. Smith was sentenced by judicial override.

Elizabeth Sennett was found dead on March 18, 1988, in the couple’s home on Coon Dog Cemetery Road in Alabama's Colbert County. The coroner testified that the 45-year-old woman had been stabbed eight times in the chest and once on each side of the neck. Her husband, Charles Sennett Sr, who was the pastor of the Westside Church of Christ in Sheffield, killed himself one week after his wife's death when the murder investigation started to focus on him as a suspect, according to court documents.

Smith’s final appeals focused on the state's difficulties with intravenous lines at the last two scheduled lethal injections. One execution was carried out after a delay, and the other was called off as the state faced a midnight deadline to get the execution underway. Smith's attorneys also raised the issue that judges are no longer allowed to sentence an inmate to death if a jury recommends a life sentence.