Move follows Alabama’s recent killing of death row inmate Kenneth Smith using previously untested method
Three of the largest manufacturers of medical-grade nitrogen gas in the US have barred their products from being used in executions, following Alabama’s recent killing of the death row inmate Kenneth Smith using a previously untested method known as nitrogen hypoxia.
The three companies have confirmed to the Guardian that they have put in place mechanisms that will prevent their nitrogen cylinders falling into the hands of departments of correction in death penalty states. The move by the trio marks the first signs of corporate action to stop medical nitrogen, which is designed to preserve life, being used for the exact opposite – killing people.
The green shoots of a corporate blockade for nitrogen echoes the almost total boycott that is now in place for medical drugs used in lethal injections. That boycott has made it so difficult for death penalty states to procure drugs such as pentobarbital and midazolam that a growing number are turning to nitrogen as an alternative killing technique.
Now, nitrogen producers are engaging in their own efforts to prevent the abuse of their products. The march has been led by Airgas, which is owned by the French multinational Air Liquide.
Nitrogen hypoxia sounds like one of the best ways to die, without pain or panic, but I completely understand why no company wants to be the supplier of the means of executing people. Small volume, small profits, extreme controversy. What’s to want there?
Sure. If it was done correctly and we could trust the justice system to not kill innocent people. However they figured out the cruelest way to do it and SCOTUS ruled we have to kill innocent people even if all the evidence says they’re innocent because it might hurt the court’s reputation of they back down.
I’m not familiar with this. Is this something that actually happened?
yes more then once. Most recently the supreme court ruled you can’t bring new evidence to an areal. Why? because it would undermine the state right to be sure of their decision. Also note that the most successful way to win an appeal on a criminal case was to bring new evidence that showed your defense did not do their job or the prosecution withheld evidence that showed your innocence.
Shinn V Ramirez, 2022.
They were arguing ineffective counsel post conviction because evidence wasn’t submitted that could have shown Ramirez was innocent. Lower courts agreed, citing previous SCOTUS rulings. SCOTUS decided federal courts must be bound by the original evidence only.
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Personally I love how they say we need to respect a state’s right to enforce social norms. With the death penalty. Because those are equivalent things. Betty doesn’t like to mow her lawn. She likes to let her neighbor Lucy do it. Off to the chair for her! Okay jokes aside what they mean is their power to make laws, enforce laws, and have a court system.
And then it’s too expensive? Really? I’m not going to be surprised when we end up with the purge only instead of being everywhere it’s actually when the air raid siren goes off during yard time at the prison.
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/25/1226936713/alabama-execution-kenneth-smith
Yeah you need to be in a chamber where your exhaled co2 is so immediately diluted that you get no feedback from it. I believe the current attempts used normal medical masks
If “right to die” laws become more of a thing, this would be the most compassionate way of doing a home suicide kit. I wonder if the manufacturers would oppose that as well, or only executions.
Like you said, there’s not much in it for them either way.
It sounds like a reasonable way to die when the individual doesn’t know what’s going on or is accepting/willing. As an execution method it’s shit.
Well, disregarding the normal fear of death that would be there regardless of the method, I think the issue is the mask. It would be much better to just fill the room with N2. You can do this easilly enough by evaporating liquid N2. Of course, this would not be “medical grade” so people would complain just to complain.
We could also just not kill people. Kinda seems to be at the root of this problem.
I could not agree more. People should stop murdering people so there is no need for the death penalty.
Keep in mind this guy thought it was fine to kill someone for $1000. Not any hatred or psychological issue or ideology. Just a bit of cash.
“Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?”
-Holly Near
Or we could just not retaliate with execution. We could follow the evidence that execution doesn’t reduce crime rate or severity and to not make murderers of the state
Its this flawed argument on repeat. You just start assuming that killing a murderer (“life for a life”) is somehow automatically wrong and then use it to show death penalty is wrong.
Why is “life for a life” somehow unfair demand for the premeditated murderers? What is this based on? Or just repeating it because you heard it so often.
Youre Right I’m just parroting the idea that killing is bad. Definitely not from a belief that punitive justice is ineffective at reducing crime, that we as a society must be better than our worst people, and a deep terror informed by history at the idea of a government having the power to decide to kill its own citizens.
Like seriously this is fucking gas chambers in Alabama and some people aren’t just horrified by where that might go?
You mix two very different issues. Whether our corrupt governments should have the power to execute people, which they shouldn’t but its not what this article is about. Also, since they had this power since like the beginning of written history, I kind of am too used to it to be horrified.
And if we are executing people, what the method should be. Electric chair is something that actually horrifies me. So if we at least get a 100x more humane method, it is a win in my book. Certainly not gonna loose sleep because it has association with Nazis. So does VolksWagen and Fanta.
And we have the capacity to be better than that.
There was no compelling need to execute him. If such a compelling need did exist, it would have presented itself in the past 36 years where he was in custody but not executed. But it didn’t, so the state just waited until some arbitrary time to tick a box that didn’t need to be ticked.
My fundamental issue is with the “better than that”. I really don’t see why letting a cold blooded murderer off lightly would be the better way.
What do you mean by “off lightly?” They’re still getting punished while serving a life sentence. The punishment stops when the lights go out.
Do you actually believe that life imprisonment and death are the same level of punishment? And if yes, why would it matter which one we use?
If it is not the same, then how are they not getting of lightly for ending someone elses life?
Well prison for decades doesn’t seem very light to me. I have never been granted but from those that have I have heard most wouldn’t recommend it.
You think living the rest of your life in a cage is “getting off lightly?” Are you a child?
Still not enough. I have had the same stance for a long time. The death penalty should only be used, if ever, for crimes so bad that to not use it is to say thr crime was as bad as regular murder. Warlords who commit genocide level.
What need is that, exactly?
You don’t know that. You think that, and there’s evidence to support it, but you don’t know it.
As I wrote in a different thread, yes, I agree we should not have death penalty due to the high possibility (inevitability?) of executing innocent people.
I just don’t see any moral issue with executing actual murderers with N2, just the practical issue of not being able to precisely determine who the murderers are.
Why do you even care which way they kill people then? Trying to take the moral high ground, when you’re just as blood thirsty as the condemned.
That’s a ridiculous argument. If I believe a bank robber should be stopped from robbing a bank using force, can’t I also demand the force is not excessive?
Thinking death is an appropriate punishment and torture isn’t is not contradictory.
You think bank robbery is a crime worthy of execution?
I literally said the opposite. Just because I don’t believe people should be allowed to rob banks, I don’t believe they should be killed or maimed for it.
Just because I believe the death penalty is just does not mean I believe people should be tortured.
Yeah the mask and timing is what caused that one prisoner to be in so much suffering since he knew it was going to happen imminently so he held his breath.
If it were done gradually over a period of like 30 minutes, he likely wouldn’t have noticed and just drifted into unconsciousness.
…No, you’d notice. When you’re in that “not quite enough oxygen in the room” scenario, you get tingles and headaches and such. It kinda sucks. Though I think I’d rather die that way than those gas station lethal injections they’ve been doing.
Just not true! The execution method requires a willing or unconscious victim. Why do people think any type of asphyxiation will be nice and peaceful regardless of the gas used? (yes I understand the “science” behind using this gas.) but what if the person holds their breath, or account for the added adrenaline, or the person hyperventilating. I can go on. It’s not medically sound way to execute people. Honestly, this is the same lies they pushed about previous humane execution methods. “it’s painless, the science is sound.” I promise you, after about 5 more “botched” executions using this N2 method it’ll be abandoned.
“What if the person holds their breath?”
Then it’ll take maybe a minute longer, and their last words are gonna be “BUH! Huh! Huh! Huh! …huh.”
“or account for the added adrenaline”
No oxygen in brain, brain die. I think you lied about understanding the science.
“or the person is hyperventilating”
Yeah, what if they breathe no oxygen faster?
Is there a medically sound way? What does “medically sound” even mean? Theere is no patient who is supposed to survive.
It is the best way of execution I can think of short of explosives near brain.
That’s the point you pull out and try to focus on? “Humane” executions always had a medical backing for why it world work.
Then the you try to say “is the best way of execution I can think of short of explosives near the brain.” oh really that’s the best you can think of? Shows how flawed and warped your understanding of this is. If you honestly want to make it as quick and painless in pretty sure the French figured that out back in 1789. But Ya let’s blow up people’s heads with c4.
Your brain can function without oxygen for over 30 seconds. I see no reason why it wouldn’t in a detached head.
The guillotine suffer from the same issue most execution methods used until now, they only seem “quick and painless”. Nitrogen gas actually is painless.
Nitrogen gas will be found to be unsuitable for execution. I just hope people wake up to this before more people are tortured to death.
I really would like to know: The people who object to N2, if you could pick any reasonably practical execution method (but it has to be execution, no death by old age), what would you pick?
Ah yes, the ole “let’s bring back the guillotine that left you alive and semi conscious for up to 30 seconds while your head rolls around” argument. Such humane, much wow