Attorneys for an inmate are asking the Alabama Supreme Court to reject the state's request to set an execution date for him using the new execution method of nitrogen hypoxia.
An Alabama inmate would be the test subject for the “experimental” execution method of nitrogen hypoxia, his lawyers argued, as they asked judges to deny the state’s request to carry out his death sentence using the new method.
In a Friday court filing, attorneys for Kenneth Eugene Smith asked the Alabama Supreme Court to reject the state attorney general’s request to set an execution date for Smith using the proposed new execution method. Nitrogen gas is authorized as an execution method in three states but it has never been used to put an inmate to death.
Smith’s attorneys argued the state has disclosed little information about how nitrogen executions would work, releasing only a redacted copy of the proposed protocol.
Going to guess it is significantly easier to be competent enough to kill someone with hypoxia rather than a cocktail of multiple constantly changing drugs administered by someone who had little training.
You know you live in a third world country if you have discussions about how to kill your citizens. There is no need for the death penalty but a twisted and false sense of justice.
People on death row are more expensive than on life sentence. You could have them work without making it slave like but talking about the U.S. prison system in general just makes me want to throw up. Its no wonder that people would argue for killing if they dont view inmates a human beings. I guess there is a special flavor of "humanism" in the U.S.
I can tell you the european countries are doing quite well without enslaving and killing their inmates.
Apparently it's a hot take: there are people who exist that we would all absolutely be better off were they dead.
This guy was someone who was paid to kill another person for a thousand dollars. This is not just "a citizen" unless you're saying it makes sense to keep people around in society that will fucking murder someone for less than a months pay.
Counterpoint: Given the number of people in government who said government should murder me because of the rainbow pin on my lapel, I don't want government to have the power to murder anyone even if we all agree they deserve it. What makes you think that this is the one thing the government is competent at?
I never said this is a person that society needs to keep around.
I do not believe that living is a right that can be earned or unearned. It is a right everyone has. If a person is unfit for society they need to be seperated from society. If that means having them in prison for live than that is what we should do. Killing them is done for one purpose mainly: Because it gives some people a sense of justice. This sense of justice however is false as the only justice would be to undo what was done.
That's what they say, even keeping him locked up for life would be cheaper. Also how do you decide what's gruesome enough to justify killing people, what about wrongfully convicted people they do exist and they got murdered. There are so many good arguments against and do few if any for the death penalty it's mind-blowing to me how any more or less democratic society doesn't abolish it.
Here's the thing though.
I agree 100% that the world is probably better off without this asshole in it.
But I don't think we should be doing that. For every one of these guys, you'll have another guy who got railroaded by a crooked prosecutor, or who will later be proven innocent with better DNA testing. There's just no way to be sure every one is 'good', and I'd rather let bad people live than accidentally kill good people.
Even if you're right, that doesn't mean we should actually kill them. People are people, they should be treated as such. We can throw them in jail far easier, and to the rest of us, it's equivalent to them being dead.
I absolutely agree with you in the first point, but I think there are cases where person really doesn't have the capacity, or we don't want to try it. I think of mass murderers or child murderers or something like that. People who are going to spend their whole life in jail with life-sentence with no way of ever getting out and who cost the state money and are the reason why some people want death sentence back in my country for example.
The first point still applies however and there are cases of people getting out of jail after ten or fifteen years when new evidence is discovered.
Moat likely, but since qualified people don't participate in executions it will probably end up being done wrong and he will suffocate to death with carbon dioxide and suffer horribly in a different way.
This is interesting, and I personally feel he is fighting it only because it buys him more time. In a different article (linked in this one), where they announce Alabama's plan to use nitrogen it says:
Smith, in seeking to block the state’s second attempt to execute him by lethal injection, had argued that nitrogen should be available.
So he literally asked to use nitrogen, they said "ok" and now's he's saying "how dare you try to use me as a guinea pig"
The correct analogy would be you refusing to get out of a fighter jet except via ejection seats, them refusing to be ejected lol. This guy apparently wasn't saying it should be available in general but that it should be an option for him.
If you think his inconsistent argument is ridiculous, you don't understand the legal system. It's okay, that's why there are lawyers. (1) Alternate pleading is a thing, (2) the State pulls the same shit except 1000% worse, (3) the judiciary, especially the GOP judiciary that is elected on a "tough on crime" platform (got to love politicized justice), is ABSOLUTELY the most inconsistent, as their goal is to accept any argument of the State that leads to speedy execution. It goes all the way up to the SCOTUS - former Chief Justice Rehnquist was absolutely a shining star of the death machine, regardless of actual innocence. EDIT: the thing that really pisses me off is when the media covers alternate pleading without context. It's terribly biased reporting designed to give people justice boners and pump up support for the State. EDIT2: I might be slightly off with my terms of art - I'm in transactional law, not criminal law, and it's been a hell of a long time since law school or anything involving criminal law beyond a traffic ticket.
A glib reply would be "What's the worst that could happen?, they'd die?" but a far worse outcome is that they remain conscious but in constant pain for an unnecessarily long time. I'm personally against execution of any form but if it's going to be done let's make sure it's humane.
well what you describe is how Normal executions go. Doctors won't do it so it's done by prison guards with no medical training and is often so disgusting the witnesses need counseling
But if I were to pick my way of dying, nitrogen hypoxia is the way I would like to go
Nitrogen is the most common thing you breath, almost 80% of air being nitrogen.
You don't feel like you are being choked, because that feeling does not come from less oxygen, but when other gasses like carbon dioxide is at a too high level. Foreign liquid, or even being unable to expand your lungs. There is no too low oxygen sensor in your body that is used to send pain signals.
You gradually lose your cognitive faculties, including feeling pain or self preservation.
I am against captial or even corporal punishment, even for heinous crimes.
If you are thinking about ending your life, seek help with health care professionals, everyone deserves a chance to have a better life.
All that said, I think nitrogen hypoxia is the most humane way of ending a life. I would even wish that my chicken nuggets got the least painful end to their lives
I support giving convicts with death sentences the right to choose the means (within reason). Nitrogen hypoxia is probably more humane than most of the methods we've tried, although I personally prefer bringing back the guillotine. If we're willing to kill a man for justice, we ought be willing to reject childish euphemisms (putting him to sleep) and make a bloody mess of it.
Personally I've been advocating for the "shitload of explosives" method. It doesn't get much more humane than being blown to a red mist in milliseconds, and the audience would love it.
Medicalized death sentences like the lethal injection seriously creep me out. Even a murderer deserves to face death with dignity, not strapped to a table and injected with poison.
My position: no government should be given the power to kill its citizens under any other circumstances than to protect other people from imminent violence, i.e. the same circumstances that would qualify as self-defence by a private individual.
For the sake of argument: if you really wanted a painless and humane death what could be better than a carefully modulated dose of opioids?
I'm guessing the answer is if they get high on the way out then it isn't justice because only fear and suffering will assuage those with a vengeance boner.
No, it's because opioids aren't 100% effective at a painless death either. At this stage, no death we know of is truly "painless". Well, that we can prove anyway. They've had patients hooked to brain monitors when they've died in their sleep, the brain goes through severe stress at the moment of death. Drowning is meant to be okay, but for obvious reasons, we can't prove that.
That's why apparently the execution squads are told that at least one of them has blank bullets. And why two doctors do the lethal injection procedure simultaneously, but one of them is injecting saline. This way everyone can legitimately think "maybe it wasn't me who killed them". I think I read in in "Behave" by Robert M. Sapolsky.
What an idiot, he's just turned down the most humane and painless way to go. You don't notice nitrogen suffocation, because your body ignores nitrogen in the air and determines you're suffocating by a build up in CO2. Instead, you pass out in blissful hypoxia.
I'm against the death penalty as a rule of thumb, but if you have to do it then it should only be done via nitrogen suffocation. Anything else is just a refelction of the vindictiveness of the people administering or pushing for the punishment - it doesn't achieve anything, it doesn't deter future crime, it's just you getting your own back and trying to say it's ok to harm others in this instance. If the goal is to remove them from society such that they don't harm or cost society anymore, then this should be done without the kind of harmful intent that the criminal themselves demonstrated.
Tbh though I imagine this is just the guy's lawyer trying to do anything he can to delay the execution. There's some small chance that the state could do something wrong during the hearings that leads to some benefit for the prisoner. However I can only imagine the regret the prisoner might feel as he's on the receiving ends of one of the other methods.
Yeah the difference is this method is actually promoted by the scientific community, rather than commercial interests. Nitrogen suffocation is used for assisted suicide.
I just wish we'd use it for pork. However because it's so hazardous to humans (boiling nitrogen releases gas that expands very quickly and expells all the oxygen in the room) we just stick with CO2, which is very easy because it's heavier than air so you just have walkways to protect the people. With nitrogen, they'd require much more expensive safety measures to protect people working nearby. Also, CO2 causes a feeling of suffocation, leading to the pig lashing about and suffering, and possibly spoiling the meat somewhat.
Electrocution is perhaps the worst. They actually limit the current, meaning it kills you a little more slowly or maybe not at all, because if they went full power they would literally cook the person and that would smell unpleasant for everyone else. Lethal injections aren't much better, typically they paralyse the person first so they can feel themselves dying but not move to show any sign of it.
I'm certainly keen to learn of any further downsides to nitrogen, but as far as I'm aware it's the best thing going (out of a horrible bunch of ways to kill). Like I said before, I'm against the death penalty as a rule, but if you're going to do it then it should be as painless as possible.
That’s liquid nitrogen, bro. This is nitrogen gas which in a confined space will consume all of the available oxygen and thus induce asphyxiation
(suffocation).
Those are not painless methods and they hearken to a sense of vengeance, not justice. If someone is truly so irredeemable that we cannot re-educate them to learn to be good citizens or at least non-offending citizens, then we should remove them from the ability to cause further harm. But we are not in the business of causing suffering, at least not on paper we're not. So we should give the person a civilized death with no pain, as causing pain is not justice, it's vengeance.
But I'm all in agreement when it comes to reducing the cost. I don't love the death penalty, I think it should be reserved for absolutely impossible cases, but it should be cheaper.
This isn't more intricate, it's significantly more efficient and foolproof. There are so many ways that hanging someone or shooting them can go wrong, it's unnecessarily complicated.
I don't know much about asphyxiation but it does not sound comfortable. Concerning lethal injection, it's not certain how much pain the paralyzed body feels as the heart is being stopped – have there been EEG studies?
The human body can only detect a buildup of carbon dioxide in the lungs, not a lack of oxygen. This is why it's uncomfortable to hold your breath for a long time. If you inhale pure nitrogen while being able to exhale, there is no build up of CO2 and therefore little to no discomfort.
Wikipedia cites a USAF text, saying: "Some individuals experience headache, dizziness, fatigue, nausea and euphoria, and some become unconscious without warning."
It's supposed to be very painless. If I remember correctly your body can't tell the difference between oxygen and nitrogen so you don't have a feeling of lack of air, just continue breathing normally then fall asleep and expire.
Generally, the build up of CO2 is what triggers pain and panic of asphyxiation. Oxygen displacing gases certainly do cause fast unconsciousness and brain damage. Would seem very likely that nitrogen works well.
There's plenty of knowledge about the effects of nitrogen from it being a workplace hazard in a lot of places.
One example is anchor chain lockers on ships. That big iron chain that just came out of the salt water wants to turn into iron oxide so it absorbs all the oxygen making the environment extremely nitrogen rich. In several cases people have been climbing down into it and without warning go unconscious. I think one case had three dead at the bottom before the fourth guy comes along with some brains and thinks maybe I shouldn't go down there.
In any case, displacing oxygen with nitrogen is one of those things that you'd never notice until it was too late. because your body bases it's breathing off how much air your sucking in, you don't even start hyper ventilating.
This comment was funny but your argument with this guy became kinda dumb.
This dude forfeited his life for crimes he absolutely unequivocally committed. How he is killed, he has no right to decide. We the people do. Original commenter dude has a rough take but it isn't that cruel, fuck murderers they're fortunate we the people dislike violence and actively seek humane executions.