Alabama sets execution date in ’88 contract killing

By KIM CHANDLER
Associated Press

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama has set a November execution date for a man convicted in the 1988 murder-for-hire killing of a pastor’s wife. Fifty-seven-year-old Kenneth Eugene Smith is set to die at Holman Correctional Facility on Nov. 17. Smith was sentenced to death for killing of Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett, a 45-year-old grandmother and pastor’s wife. Prosecutors said Smith was one of two men who were each paid $1,000 to kill the woman on behalf of her husband. Her husband later killed himself. A judge overrode a jury’s recommendation of life imprisonment to sentence Smith to death. The scheduled execution follows criticism over the state’s last two lethal injection attempts, including one that was called off after the execution team had trouble finding a vein.