A federal judge who is weighing whether to allow the nation’s first execution by nitrogen hypoxia to go forward next month, urged Alabama on Thursday to change procedures so the inmate can pray and say his final words before the gas mask is placed on his face.
U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker made the suggestion in a court order setting a Dec. 29 deadline to submit information before he rules on the inmate’s request to block the execution. The judge made similar comments the day prior at the conclusion of a court hearing.
Alabama is scheduled to execute Kenneth Eugene Smith on Jan. 25 in what would be the nation’s first execution using nitrogen gas. Nitrogen hypoxia is authorized as an execution method in Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma but has never been used to put an inmate to death.
The proposed execution method would use a gas mask, placed over Smith’s nose and mouth, to replace breathable air with nitrogen, causing Smith to die from lack of oxygen.
I think public executions where the prisoner is tortured to death are more progressive than supposed “humane” methods.
Not because I like cruelty or think they deserve it, but I want the State to do it’s killing out in the open where citizens are exposed to what’s happening in their name. Hiding the act behind closed doors and beneath a cloak of “humane” methods allows the State to exercise ultimate authority in secret from the people from whom that authority is derived. It’s the State and the supporters of the death penalty that are being spared pain.
Yes, I got this from Foucault.
You highly overestimate the amount of compassion the average person has. If you torture people to death in public people will sell tickets for the best seats. The Romans built a whole damn arena for this purpose.
Yes! you’re correct. It will be spectacle and celebration. We may revel in our cruelty, but we cannot feign mercy.
The question of capital punishment comes into focus. I don’t trust in compassion; I’m advocating for honesty.
I can’t tell if you’re joking or if you think people have the same morals as someone from the roman history
Honestly I think you’ll find they’re not aa different as you wish they were. people are as cruel today as they’ve ever been.
Cruel enough to torture people in public? Get a grip on reality.
What planet/version of reality are you living on/in? This literally still happens in several counties.
It’s easy to forget, but we have the same brains as back then. Societal values may have changed, but there will be those with a sick fascination who want to see. When the bath school massacre happened (1920s I think?) People took home souvenirs.
Nothing suggests to us that the morality of Roman times is capable of existing now. You say “societal values may have changed” but that’s the entire thing. They’ve changed. We have shifted the society to where this kind of public torture would never happen. It can happen again and people are capable, but not unless society shifts.
And the trends show that while people are divisive, their morals are very closely related. You may not agree on abortion but most people agree we shouldn’t kill prisoners inhumanely.
People completely misunderstand morality. People are not currently capable of tolerating this kind of thing. If you think so, do a survey and I’ll eat my hat.
Societal values change all the time and not always for the better. Let’s enjoy the values we have now, they might not be present tomorrow.
r/watchpeopledie was popular enough to reach the top of r/all quite regularly before NFSW was filtered from it, and had half a million subscribers. There’s still plenty people in today’s society that would enjoy a medieval style public torture and execution.
Tell me you’ve never watched a Republican primary debate without telling me.
Nearly every election cycle there’s at least one debate where the death penalty comes up and you have governors competing with each other over body counts to an audience cheering them on.
None of what you said represents average people
I suspect you overestimate the average person.
Saying that people would enjoy public violence is a pure fantasy. No average person is going to go to an execution, they’re barely even favorable and only because it’s “humane”. Most people are nonviolent. Most people will never see anyone die unexpectedly or intentionally. Most people wont ever seriously injure someone.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session
Most people are only non-violent because the violence is socially frowned-upon. When given an acceptable outlet for savagery, humans have no problem being savage.
This is also how riots form.
What Foucalt gets wrong here is that historically, civilians just enjoy it. They don’t find it barbaric or inhumane.
Like there wouldn’t be some national conversation about “what have we become” - it’ll just be a fun thing people do.
What if we stop executing people entirely?
No, that would be to moral. Unchristian even.
Being executed is a pretty Christian thing to do - though I’m not sure nitrogen is du jour.
Oh wow, this sounds so humane.
I think it can be improved though. Just give him general anesthesia 5m before the nitrogen mask.
That should be the most peaceful way to go.
You know you fucked up somewhere as a society when killing people is considered humane.
I mean, some people really deserve it. There are some living monsters out there, and I don’t believe in the sanctity of their life. I’d rather save a cow from a farm than save a serial murderer who raped the corpses of their victims. In my country these was this guy who raped, tortured and murdered like 60 children. He’s no longer people to me.
I do not need anything akin to religious holyness as a basis for respecting human life. I do not want to kill them, not because their life is sacred, but because I consider myself to be a decent human being.
Some of these people are also very much sick in a medical sense. Some are unfortunately the victims of former abuse. It does not matter what you think they deserve. If you want to be a good person you should help them (as in prison with therapy), because they clearly need it and you should be someone helping people in need.
EDIT: Just as I do not believe in religion, I also do not believe in monsters.
I think some people are in fact beyond help. They’d be a waste of resources that could actually help others who can change. Humans don’t have unlimited resources, so assuming we can help every single murderer and child rapist until they are reformed and ready to join society is just idealistic and unrealistic. So even if you don’t like it, this is better than letting them rot in a cell until they die of old age.
Plus, we’re just little bugs on a tiny rock in a universe so big we can’t even begin to comprehend. The only reason human life seems so important to you is because you’re a human. Personally, I’d rather focus on people making society a better place and making others happy instead of putting effort on a guy who rapes, tortures and beheads children.
When was the country’s most recent capital punishment before this one?
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Did he allow his victim to pray and say final words?
It doesn’t matter. We don’t do eye for an eye here.
Literally what the death penalty is. If what you said was true we would be working on rehabilitation.
The death penalty is not an ultimate punishment for a crime, in it’s most logical sense. It is based on a conclusion that an individual is ‘beyond saving’, evidenced by the actions they commit. Eliminating them from existence is the only guarantee they never do a similar action in the future.
There’s plenty of reasons why this reasoning falls apart , though - namely that quite often you can’t be 100% sure you have the actual culprit, or that they are actually ‘beyond saving’.
A person beyond saving could still be left in prison for life and at least treated humanly. We kill them because what they did is so bad we want them dead. People try to pretend otherwise but thats what it is. Simple as that.
And honestly I get it. I fully think some people should die for what they did. But, like you said, we run into the problem of how often our shitty legal system gets the wrong person which is why I don’t believe in the death penalty despite the fact I think some people should just die.
I agree with the first part, though not the second. I doubt most judges view the death penalty as a pointless act of spite, and view it more as a logical removable of an irredeemable agent.
My rationale on it is different. I think that if someone commits a heinous action, they either did it for a logical reason or an illogical reason. If it was logical to commit the act, then that is a failure of the system for creating perverse incentives, and change must occur to remove such incentives. If the person committed the act for illogical reasons, then there is something wrong with them, and the should be treated as someone suffering from something. If the individual is deemed truly “beyond saving” then they are suffering a mental handicap and should be sheltered such that they aren’t a danger to themselves or others.
By this logic, there is never justification for a death penalty.
How dare you undercut their platitude with reasoning.
Murderer put to death. Don’t do eye for an eye. Hmm OK America.
In one of the articles about this case it was said, “we do not teach those not to rape by raping them.”
Actually, yes. this is Kenneth Eugene Smith, who was convicted in a 1988 murder-for-hire slaying of a preacher’s wife. Elizabeth Sennett, 45, was found dead on March 18, 1988, in her home in Alabama’s Colbert County. She had been stabbed eight times in the chest and once on each side of neck.
In all actuality, there is no information saying that he did or did not allow this, but I did learn a lot about this case. Turns out two guys were hired to kill this pastors wife because the pastor had an affair (doesn’t make sense but it is what happened). These two guys, one of them stole things to stage a burglary. He was put to death in 2010 and his last words were to her sons, “I’m sorry. I don’t ever expect you to forgive me. I really am sorry.”
The other, currently on death row, agreed to beat her, but apparently did not intend to kill her.
After the pastor became a suspect, he drove to the gathering, told his sons what part he had played (hiring a crew to kill his wife and himself having an affair), then got into his truck and shot himself.
It’s a waste of life. Terrible decisions from three people that ultimately led to a severely somber outcome for everyone involved.
This isn’t the Old Testament, fool
No you’re right. America would absolutely never try to base legal decisions on religion. We are so far beyond that.
Wha…when did I say that?
You are saying that we wouldn’t act like that because this isn’t the Old testament and I am pointing out that we are trying very fucking hard to treat our legal system that way. That is literally what is happening right this second.
No, I made a shallow joke that you read waaaaay too far into. Get a hobby or something.
