AL.com reporter Ivana Hrynkiw was one of 5 media witnesses at Kenneth Eugene Smith’s execution tonight. In his final 32 minutes of life, Kenneth Eugene Smith, executed tonight by the state of Alabama using an untested method of nitrogen gas, thanked those who supported him in his final year on Death Row. And, as he breathed his final breaths, witnesses could see him writing and thrashing for several minutes, his face covered by the mask used to administer the gas. Smith, sentenced to death for the 1988 murder-for-hire of a pastor’s wife, said that he saw humanity “rise up” after he “suffered everything (he) did last year.”