By Jonathan Allen (Reuters) – An Alabama death row prisoner who survived a botched execution attempt by lethal injection asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to halt the state’s planned second attempt next week, this time by the novel method of asphyxiation with nitrogen gas. Lawyers for Kenneth Smith, convicted for a murder-for-hire committed in 1988, are arguing that for a government to make a second attempt to execute a prisoner after painfully botching a first attempt violates the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Such a scenario has happened only …