Alabama, unless stopped by the courts, intends to strap Kenneth Eugene Smith to a gurney Thursday and use a gas mask to replace breathable air with nitrogen, depriving him of oxygen, in the nation’s first execution attempt with the method.
The Alabama attorney general’s office told federal appeals court judges last week that nitrogen hypoxia is “the most painless and humane method of execution known to man.” But what exactly Smith, 58, will feel after the warden switches on the gas is unknown, some doctors and critics say.
“What effect the condemned person will feel from the nitrogen gas itself, no one knows,” Dr. Jeffrey Keller, president of the American College of Correctional Physicians, wrote in an email. “This has never been done before. It is an experimental procedure.”
Keller, who was not involved in developing the Alabama protocol, said the plan is to “eliminate all of the oxygen from the air” that Smith is breathing by replacing it with nitrogen.
I don’t see it as intended as a deterrent so much as a statement of values. A way of saying some things are not games or forgivable.
But in order to make that statement of values, are you willing to execute innocent people and to divert money away from other public programs that uphold other important values?
Life without parole would have the same effect though.
I don’t want absolute human garbage to be given food and accomodations paid by taxes for the rest of their lives.
That’s why you lock them up forever. Unless of course later evidence vindicates them, since the justice system is imperfect and innocent people do occasionally get wrongly convicted. Y’know what totally prevents later vindication if someone was wrongly convicted?
Whether or not some crimes deserve the death penalty, so long as it’s possible for innocent people to be convicted, the death penalty is morally unjustifiable.
Like murdering an innocent person?
You wrote a contradiction in which it’s not a deterrent but is one too.