Alabama’s plan for nation’s first execution by nitrogen gas is ‘hostile to religion,’ lawsuit says
Kenneth Eugene Smith’s execution would be the nation’s first using nitrogen gas.
Lawyers for a spiritual adviser to an Alabama inmate scheduled to be executed with nitrogen gas next month said in a complaint filed Wednesday that restrictions on how close the adviser can get to the inmate in the death chamber are “hostile to religion.”
The Rev. Jeff Hood, who plans to enter the death chamber to minister to Kenneth Eugene Smith, said the Alabama Department of Corrections asked him to sign a form acknowledging the risks and agreeing to stay 3 feet (0.9 meters) away from Smith’s gas mask. Hood, a death penalty opponent, said that shows there is a risk to witnesses attending the execution. He said the restrictions would also interfere with his ability to minister to Smith before he is put to death.
“They’ve asked me to sign a waiver, which to me speaks to the fact that they’re already concerned that things could go wrong,” Hood said in a telephone interview.
Smith’s execution would be the nation’s first using nitrogen gas. The nitrogen is planned be administered through the gas mask placed over Smith’s nose and mouth while he is strapped to a gurney in the death chamber normally used for lethal injections.
Or they're worried he will accidentally dislodge the mask and interfere with the proper administration of nitrogen. There is no actual danger to breathing nitrogen - the air we breathe is mostly nitrogen - we just need oxygen mixed in. It's all a stage play for delaying his execution.
I'm not in favor of execution, but this is the most humane method we have available. So until we can stop executing people, it would be good not to fuck with doing it in this way.
The article says the concern is if the masks leaks or becomes dislodged, the area within 2 feet might have the oxygen replaced.
So they said once the gas is on, the priest has to be at least 3 feet away.
But apparently the priest wants to touch him during it?
Like. That wouldn't work with the electric chair either.
Edit:
And to clarify, the person being executed is the one suing because he wants the priest to touch him while he dies.
Put the preist in SCBA gear (thing firefighters). Might as well turn this primitive practice (capital executions and preists) and go full on distopian clown show.
No no, put him in one of those old timey diving suits with the air tube and stuff.
Just as the Lord intended!
Blood for the blood god, skulls for the skull throne!
Well…we CAN stop. Before this one.
Theoretically? Sure. Actually though, there's no chance. Sadly.
No, they're worried about it being painless. Their god is a god of wrath.
No...
Because it's his priest objecting to it, after he signed the waiver saying he agreed to be 3 feet away once the gas was turned on.
It's an attempt to delay the execution
Did he sign the waiver? This says he was asked to sign it.
It's confusing because in interviews the priest is saying he was asked to sign it, but is leaving out that he already did.
But if you read the whole article, you'd have seen this bit buried below
If he hasn't signed it, they could proceed without him.
So he signed it, and now the lawsuit is happening to stall the execution.
Seems to me the waiver is a completely separate issue anyway if the lawsuit is about whether he can properly do the ministry without touching the guy, not actually him accepting the risks of being around.
Honest question. How is anything more humane than a bullet to the brain stem?
Hell even something like the cattle bolt or if you wanna get real technical on a pain scale something that immediately destroys the entire brain?
Like personally just put my head in a machine that crushes my head so fast that I couldn't possibly perceive it.
Tbh I guess I just don't really comprehend what "humane" means. The way everyone talks about it makes it seem like it just means not leaving a mess.
I'd be worried about any such machine failing and only grievously injuring me.
In the case of inert gas asphyxiation, failure doesn't hurt. Just try again.
Failure of asphyxiation still has a high risk of brain damage.
Brain damage is painless, and transient because they're just going to redo the execution anyway.
Uh what, brain damage can cause major issues like seizures and migraines. Having debilitating seizures or migraines for weeks or months till they can reschedule the execution sounds pretty bad.
There's no need for rescheduling, just crank up the nitrogen and keep going.
I mean, if you really really want to imagine a scenario where the execution fails and the victim is left in pain for an extended period, you can do that with any method. You could imagine a scenario where the subject is strapped to a nuclear bomb that still ends up surviving with misery and pain. But you have to go to extremely unlikely outcomes with something as utterly dead simple as "flood the lungs with nitrogen".
There are a lot of things that can go wrong with a gun and a bullet. With a nitrogen mask, the worst is that it just won't work.
Just falling asleep, with no sensation of suffocating, no struggling, seems like the best option out of a lot of bad options.
Not killing people would be a better option, really.
Ideally, yes.
Do you just enjoy trying to derail conversations?
Yea
"What's the most humane way to crush these orphans?"
Wine press
Humane, in these types of circumstances, are not just for the victim, but for the witnesses and executioners as well.
The internet legend that created the suicide helmet is likely the way I’d want to go given the choice. But it would not be a pleasant thing to witness.
FTR: I’m fully against the death penalty. It is a barbaric practise. But I still feel that those who participate in this horrible exercise shouldn’t be traumatized either.
All the advances in execution methods haven't been made to make it more humane to the victim - they've been made so it seems more humane to everyone else.
AFAIK, statistics-wise, the execution method with the lowest quota of horrible mishaps is the guillotine. A sufficiently fast 4t weight to the head would probably be even quicker for the brain to go, although it'd also require more cleanup.
(Yes, even overdosing on narcotics has more mishaps - and there are little to no narcotics abailable for executions, because the producers don't want them to be used for that.)
All of the more reliable methods are... grisly, and civilisation doesn't want grisly. We want to press a button and the victim goes to sleep to never wake up, because that makes it easier on us.