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.
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You literally slip into happy fun time
Is it really ‘happy fun time’ if you know you’re going to die?
Listen to audio recordings of pilots with hypoxia, they understand something is very wrong with the plane, but they also think it’s just fine because they’re having a great day.
Completely ignoring that execution is wrong for a number of reasons
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Why would you even bring up hunger when human trafficking exists in the world? Shame on you.
Guys, I think I found a solution to both. Hear me out.
What if we feed the trafficked humans to the hungry humans.
Win win. No more trafficked humans and no more hungry humans.
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The issue is with the specific protocol being used. It’s not made public or documented. It’s almost all though they’re interested in torturing him instead of humanely executing him.
When the original news broke about Alabama using nitrogen, my wife woke me up by hitting my arm to tell me - because I’ve been saying that is the most humane possible method for the last 16 years.
I think the death penalty is stupid to begin with, and am kinda over talking about its merits after years of debate team in high school and college. But trying all of these seat-of-pants cocktails of midazolam and pentobarbital etc, and then inventing all of these ridiculous devices that require two people to push buttons at the same time so no one ever really knows whose button actually killed the person… it’s just needlessly complicated and dumb. Not to mention the fact that the legal costs involved in defending appeals and housing someone on death row are much higher than the cost of a life sentence anyway. And that’s leaving aside the statistically significant number of wrongful convictions…
I mean, we shouldn’t have the death penalty. But if we’re going to, it should be by nitrogen hypoxia.
I am split - there shouldn’t be a death penalty, and the horrors of botched executions go a long way toward undermining support for the system. While nitrogen hypoxia would be humane, it also makes the death penalty so much easier to sell. Part of me would rather have it be barbarous to undermine support. Though I can see the state being so incompetent that they end up gassing half of the executioners along with the inmate, even though they’re just putting a mask on the inmate’s face.
You’ve experienced this?
We should not be executing anyone. Hypoxia is well documented so he would not exactly be a test subject.
The test is not of the efficacy of hypoxia, but of the state’s competency.
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.
The state should never execute anyone because it implies two things that aren’t true:
- That the system is infallible.
- That a person doesn’t have the capacity to improve/rehabilitate.
That being said. I’ll take this method over any other for sure.
I agree with part 1, but the majority of people on death row do not deserve rehabilitation.
That’s pretty fucked up man.
What about the fact that death penalties usually cost more than life sentences without parole?
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”
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.
It’s way better than an electric chair.
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
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My brother in christ, public executions were a thing in a time when the majority was religious.
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(Jacob Geller’s The False Evolution of Execution Methods)
It’s different than you might imagine. There’s a certain unmistakable mix of institutional power, mandate, callousness, and incompetence that makes state execution’s uniquely awful.
I am against capital or even corporal punishment.
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’ll take it if he doesn’t want it.
I was gonna say they could test on me, but I don’t want to support the death penalty.
Right? Why aren’t suicide booths a thing yet?
The capitalist owners could make more profit off it, and that’s literally all human civilization values. And bonus, the people the Capitalists and their doting peasant sycophants consider “lazy, socialist commies” would largely opt out, leaving them to count their shillings in peace, unopposed.
Is it about needing a homeless population that can’t (easily) opt out to scare the other peasants into continuing to show up for their purposeless jobs? Or just the last thin fig leaf of the capitalists deluding themselves into believing themselves less than monstrous?
Because being trapped in this labor camp of a civilization isn’t mercy. It’s the opposite of mercy. Not legalizing escape isn’t the same thing as valuing life, and we clearly don’t. It’s the same thing as an anti-abortionist claiming to value human life while opposing social programs to help the newborn and mother.
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.
i could never live with myself if i put anyone to death, regardless of how horrific an act they committed.
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.
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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.
Nitrogen Execution?
They’re gonna freeze him and
striketap him with abaseball bathammer?Then deploy a bunch of Roombas to clean up the human icicle shards?
Jokes on them when the shards melt, and begin to reform, to continue his inexorable pursuit of John Connor
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).
Some might even consider this a kink 👀👀
It doesn’t consume oxygen. Gaseous nitrogen is very stable.
However, if there is a higher concentration of nitrogen than there should be, then you take in proportionally less oxygen in each breath.
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Convicted mercenary and experimental execution sounds like the backstory to a 90s comic character.
Why people are so obsessed with finding more and more intricate ways to execute? Hanging or shooting in the head works just fine.
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.
Why execute them then? We clearly have no issue incarcerating people for life.
I mean, I only believe in execution for people who are genuinely beyond help, extreme psychological damage or deficiencies, and that’s because I don’t believe in life incarceration either.
If someone can be reformed, reform them. If they can’t, caging them like animals for the last of their days is almost worse than the death penalty for me too. A man who is sentenced to die in prison for his crimes due to the years he’s sentenced, he should be able to opt out and go for the painless death. No forcing, no incentive, no coercion, death with dignity.
Honestly, with some prison reform I don’t think we’d need 40-50 year life sentences as often because people could actually change. For those that can’t, or who are too old to be able to change before their time served, the right to end it peacefully is something I think we all owe each other.
The death penalty is already about vengeance and not justice. Removing them from society completely is justice for harming society.
Removing them painlessly if they’re not able to be rehabilitated, definitely what I would call justice.
Hanging, shooting, whichever other painful or ‘old world justice’ method, I’m hesitant to call that justice because it causes pain and suffering needlessly. Criminals treat people less than people. People must treat criminals like people, or we’re all criminals.
Why would killing them be more justice than simple removal? Either way they’re out of society.
Plus, if we accept that laws are not 100% fairly and correctly applied, we get the added benefits of not killing the innocent.
Removal being life in prison? I think that’s whay you meant, so let me know if i misread thay.
That’s not what I think justice is because prison is about reform and not punishment. If you’re punishing them, okay, then that’s a whole other topic. But if your intent is to reform, and they’re too old to serve the sentence designed for reform or they’re deemed mentally unfit to be capable of reforming (usually in the case of extremely violent but low intelligent individuals), then the existing prison system we have in the US would be cruel to just cage someone who can’t change. The conditions US prisoners endure, especially when it comes to inmates on death row, is abysmal. Giving them the opportunity to take their own life without pain or suffering is my main “preference”, allowing death row inmates to just sit and rot in those conditions sounds worse than death. Of course, I’d leave that opinion up to the inmates though.
I’m in full agreement that laws are not 100% fairly and correctly applied, so my preference would be to allow painless suicide as “time served” for death row. Stay as long as you think you’re innocent, and hopefully we fix the conditions so they don’t want to take their life regardless of innocence due to the psychological damage they might receive.
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.
So put a bullet in his head and call it a day. Enough with this bullshit.
Seriously, who gives a fuck about boring legal motions when we’re about to give the blood god his due?!
Sacrifice! Sacrifice!
We’re so fuckin’ horny for it!!
Make sure the pentagram is nice and even. Remember, the inside angle is 36 degrees.
Even those who defend murderers should learn to use a straight-edge and compass.
Where did I defend a murderer?
I’m thirsty for their blood just like you!
There’s nothing more important than killing people who we’ve already removed from society; how else are we going to satisfy our horniness?
Still breathing our air. I guess those who defend convicted murderers enjoy breathing in what they exhale. Do you want to fluff up their pillow too?
You keep saying I’m defending a murderer when I just want to get my rocks off like you.
Unless fluffing their pillow makes you climax better? I’m into it if you are.
And fuck them for taking all of our air! We need that shit!
We do need that shit. luckily no matter what all the murderer defenders come up with, this asswipe is dead-man-walking.
I know, I’m so turgid right now!
Let’s bag this guy and release some hormones! Enough waiting!!
the state should just execute everyone who says it’s okay for the state to execute someone
