Alabama wants to be the 1st state to execute a prisoner by making him breathe only nitrogen
Alabama is seeking to become the first state to execute a prisoner by making him breathe pure nitrogen.
The Alabama attorney general’s office on Friday asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date for death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58. The court filing indicated Alabama plans to put him to death by nitrogen hypoxia, an execution method that is authorized in three states but has never been used.
Nitrogen hypoxia is caused by forcing the inmate to breathe only nitrogen, depriving them of oxygen and causing them to die. Nitrogen makes up 78% of the air inhaled by humans and is harmless when inhaled with oxygen. While proponents of the new method have theorized it would be painless, opponents have likened it to human experimentation.
That's a pretty good way to go, apparently.
But there have been an absolutely breathtaking number of death row cases that have been overturned due to new evidence that had exonerated the condemned.
It seems pretty clear that the state is doing a very crappy job of determining guilt, and therefore shouldn't be handing down such a permanent sentence.
Heh
I used to fully pro death penalty, especially for some of the sick fucks...
But then I learned about all the false convictions, some COERCED by the fucking police, and since then I'm 100% against the death penalty.
The satisfaction I get from a heinous killer getting killed, does not outweigh the horror I feel for even one innocent life being taken by the state.
It’s also cheaper to keep people in jail forever than put them to death because of all the appeals. And despite being more careful, we still get it wrong.
Also, in my mind, death is a release. Keep those fuckers stuck in their filty meat suits while they rot in prison for the rest of their lives with no hope for escape. The especially heinous ones will get extra comeuppance from the other inmates
Right. Even a life sentence can very much be reversed if exculpatory evidence appears.
It can be overturned, but it can't be reversed. You can't give someone those years back.
This is what changed my mind on the death penalty. I have no problem putting a murderer or pedo to death, but we keep freeing people when new evidence is found that proves their innocents. Until we can get it right 100% of the time, we should just lock them up until death.
Yeah this is one reason why I generally don't support the death penalty. There's no way to undo it. At least if evidence exonerates someone 50 years later, they're still alive.
Not to give anyone ideas but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_bag
I would argue that we need the death penalty as a way to protect society from the absolutely most dangerous criminals but it's very frequently misapplied. I would say, for instance, that people that are serial killers, or serial rapists (or serial child molesters), people for whom there is no significant doubt that they're guilty, and people that will reoffend if they ever manage to get out of prison, should be executed. A simple murder for hire, or a robbery? No. Ed Kemper? Absolutely.
I think that even life sentences with no parole are overused; most people can be rehabilitated and returned to society safely, if we were willing to dramatically overhaul our criminal justice system to not be based on punishment and retribution. (But if we did that, then how would we get free prison labor...? /s)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_country
All of western Europe has abolished the death oenalty completely. Many of these are countries with very low rates of serious crime.
Meanwhile countries with the death penalty, but usually also very long prison sentences and high rates of incarcerations like the US are pretty bad with crime.
It is impossible to justifiy the death penalty empirically. The statistics actually indicate that the death penalty is linked to more crime.
Also the problem is, that clear cut beyond a doubt is what every judge who sentences someone to death, will claim about the case. Yet there is hundreds of cases in the US alone, where people were later exonerated. Some only after they have been murdered by the state already. There is nothing to gain, but a lot to loose with an execution. It cannot be overruled anymore.
Correlation =/= causation. C'mon, you know better than this. It's more probable that they have lower crime to begin with. Serial killers are not uniquely American by any stretch of the imagination, but they are quite uncommon relative to the population in other developed countries.
Read what I wrote again. I'm advocating for the death penalty in very, very limited cases, where there is no significant doubt at all, where there is no reasonable or even unreasonable belief that an offender can be rehabilitated, and the offender is extremely likely to harm more people if they ever have the opportunity.
Thats why i said indicate not "proof". But again you say no significant doubt at all. But that is always the case of the people making the decision. For them there is no doubt, yet there is regularly wrong decisions.
Would you then claim that there was any significant doubt as to the guilt of John Gacy, Theodore Bundy, Edmund Kemper, Gary Ridgeway, John Geoghan, et al.? Would you agree that they would have all posed a significant risk of future harms had they managed to escape?
No proof is 100% absolute; there is always the possibility of some error. Video evidence? Could be tampered with. Eyewitnesses? Memory is fallible. DNA? Must be from someone with near identical DNA. Confession? Those are very frequently coerced (and, seriously, confessions are a pretty terrible way of determining guilt, esp. when there's no forensic or corroborating evidence). 29 bodies or people you were last seen with found in the crawlspace of your home with your DNA and fingerprints on them? Pure coincidence, it's too good to be true, must be planted.
Given that it's impossible to know a thing with absolute certainty, how good does the evidence have to be before you would admit that there was not a significant chance of a false positive?
It's wild you disagree with life sentences and desire rehab, but also advocate for the death penalty.
I advocate for it in the case of people that can not reasonably be rehabilitated and pose an unreasonable risk to the existence of other people.
I don't know why that's difficult to wrap your head around.
You aren't going to rehabilitate a serial killer, or a serial rapist.
Can't know if you don't try. Some artists have come out and said they had these urges and art is the thing anchoring them enough to keep them from doing heinous things.
...And there's your key. Moreover, they think that art keeps them from doing it; they have no way of experimentally knowing whether or not they'd do those things in the absence of art. It seems more likely that art is their excuse and that, in the absence of art, they would find anothe,r different reason to avoid committing atrocities.
There's a distinction between wanting to do a thing, and actually doing the thing.
Prisons (at least in the US) have never been about prisoners and their reform. It's about how much money they can bring in from the state and practically free labor. Like most things in the US it is driving by profit margins.
....yay capitalism
Eh, no. We had prisons before we used prisons as a stand-in for chattel slavery. OTOH, we used to kill a lot more people for much less severe offenses, so people didn't usually end up in jails for very long. And there was a period of time where we believed in reform, but that was well over 100 years ago now.
Yep, NO. I've tried it. You can't get a breath and you feel like you're suffocating.
Nitrogen hypoxia is a risk wherever liquid nitrogen is used. If too much boils too fast, it will displace the oxygen in the room. People in the room won't even realize what happened until they pass out and die shortly thereafter.
There are reports of people rushing in to rescue those who passed out, and suddenly passing out themselves and needing to be rescued as well. That's how insidious it is. And that's why MRI scanners (which use liquid nitrogen) have oxygen sensors in the room. You can't trust your own body to tell you that all the oxygen is gone.
MRI machines are cooled by liquid helium. Nitrogen is not cold enough. I'd imagine as a noble gas it has a similar effect though.
They are cooled by liquid helium, but also have a liquid nitrogen outer dewar as well with a vacuum insulator in between. The N2 takes the brunt of the ambient heat so you don’t have to top off the (much more expensive) helium as often.
Definitely doesn't seem terribly traumatic - https://youtu.be/176eog7mZjc?si=B4TPpWw7CJb-IGXl
(CW - shows pig putting its head into a box filled with inert gas to eat food. The pig falls over, regains consciousness, then immediately places its head back into the box to continue eating)
Can you please share more of your experience? What was the occasion and the set-up? What was it like?
That's not the case with nitrogen asphyxiation.
Sure, Jan.
I'm willing to bet what you inhaled was carbon dioxide -- that gives an instant feeling of suffocation. Which ironically makes it one of the safer asphyxiant gasses, as it's heavier than air and you can detect it's presence instantly. Inert ("noble") gasses like helium, argon, and nitrogen don't have that effect.
CO2 is also cheap, readily available, non-toxic, and doesn't cause physical damage. This makes CO2 asphyxiation somewhat popular for "stunning" or killing in places like slaughterhouses, labs working with smaller animals, or "feeder" animals for reptiles.
Pro Life™️
Yeah, that's a lie, always has been.
They wouldn’t know “pro-life” if it bit them on the ass. They’re simply pro-birth. Literally everything else about the GOP platform is anti-life.
Pro birth so they can supply meat to the industrial grinder and dead solders for the war machine.
And here I am on Life Lite like a pleb.
Small government folks sure are horny about giving their government the power to murder them.
Actually the (small L) libertarians are a little split on this issue, with most seeming to agree with me that the death penalty is a stupid fucking idea from multiple standpoints. Can't trust the govt to get a damn thing right and that is no-take-backsies so no room for fuck ups (which they definitely have fucked up and killed innocent people, only to learn someone lied after it is too latw.)
OH you meant the republicans, who say "small government" but then through their actions prove they are just "the other side" of "big government" from the dems. Well, they're "lying" in order to manipulate people into voting for them (tbf, I know that's how they all get votes).
Sure, but as long as they have the death penalty, it's probably best they do it as humanely as possible.
Some states are bringing back firing squads, which definitely feels like a huge step back. If they're going to kill someone, using an actual painless option instead of lethal injection or shooting them seems like as much of a step forward as we can get up to actually not executing people.
For the person being executed, firing squads are among the most "humane" methods. It's fast, reliable, and simple. It's not common because the brutality of painting someone's brains on the wall is too clear for onlookers.
I think they typically aimed for the heart. In an by case, it causes trauma to the executioner too.
Typically they aim for the heart. Not exactly an immediate or painless death.
I'd rather have the nitrogen.
Yep. Which is how we end up building FUCKING concentration camps in the country and pave that road for a dictatorship to take over one of, if not the, leading super powers of the world.
This shit needs to stop and we need to address what is happening in the south before we start having some repeats that end in mass death. Enough is enough.
FWIW, nitrogen asphyxiation is one of the methods that's preferred by advocates of assisted suicide. Done correctly--by which I mean in a way that doesn't allow a buildup of CO2 in your bloodstream--it's not only painless but gives you a mild high. The proper way to do it is with something like a BiPAP, where the air that's being piped in is pure nitrogen, and the CO2 is all being removed immediately so you aren't breathing it back in. Without a buildup of CO2 in your bloodstream, your brain doesn't recognize that you're suffocating.
Have you ever breathed in helium from a balloon and gotten lightheaded? It's about like that.
I'm in favor of the death penalty in very, very rare cases--and this is not one where I would support it--and this is one of the surest, least barbaric ways to execute someone.
Let's tighten this up a bit.
Inert gas asphyxiation is very much a great way to go, but it's basically symptomless until after you lose consciousness.
You don't get high. The "high" people get is when they are choked out. I'm not really sure on the mechanism of that, though. You don't get lightheaded. The lightheadedness is from the blood oxygen levels increasing.
This is why it's very dangerous to enter enclosed spaces. You simply don't know you're about to die until it's too late. Plus, people come in to try to rescue you and succumb as well.
Anyway, lots of people have this experience. It's a common part of training for rebreathers for use in scuba diving.
As far as good ways to die, inert gas asphyxiation is up there with "proper" lethal injection (i.e. with a commercial euthanasia drug), opiate overdose, or just anesthetizing the being and doing whatever gets the job done.
Nitrogen can cause a "high" (aka nitrogen narcosis), but this effect only occurs at high pressures. So it is only a practical concern for divers, because they have to breathe high pressure air. Some divers replace the nitrogen in their tanks with other gases to avoid it.
It is unrelated to asphyxiation, and can occur even when the lungs are properly exchanging oxygen and CO2. It is a poorly understood direct interaction between high pressure nitrogen and the brain that does not occur at atmospheric pressure.
Correct. Extremely different thing.
Also, despite what they say in fight club, oxygen does not get you high either.
Nitrous oxide however...
When I did my deep diving certification one of the things they got us to do was try and do maths of varying complexity (compared to previously doing it on the surface). I didn’t feel high at all, but most of us had slower response times and more errors at depth, apparently as a side effect of the increased nitrogen. Pretty wild.
IIRC the hypoxia
"high"panic reaction is from an elevated level of CO2 - that's the evolved mechanism by which humans detect they're in a bad place for breathing. Not absence of O2.Edit: Correction: Hypoxia alone gets you high just before you keel over. It's the CO2 buildup that activates your body's panic reactions.
When I was ~10 I attended a wedding. Me and the other kids where tasked to fill balloons with helium and we did so without supervision. Naturally, we breathed some helium in and talked in funny voices.
I then had the bright idea to try to breathe as many of these balloons without normal air in between.
After the third of these, I lost conciousness. To me it felt as if I was gone for maybe half an hour. I was basically dreaming weird stuff. Luckily I stayed in my seat during that time and didn't fall over or something. Noone of the others noticed anything, so it couldn't have been that long. Maybe a few seconds in reality.
If ever I would need to be killed, this would be my preferred method of leaving the earth.
Happy to see them try it, even though I am against executing people.
With hypoxia, you get euphoria prior to death. No suffering, no pain, just a little high to send you off this earth.
Should do it to animals too.
Indeed. I have read that the reason we don't is because it takes too long.
That's why they use CO2 asphyxiation, but in my opinion, that's torture.
CO2 asphyxiation is extremely unpleasant. That is absolutely torture, and it is not in any way shape or form an ethical way to euthanize anything.
Leave the earth? "This" earth? What do you mean?
He means die. People use lots of euphemisms when talking about death. This is one of them.
When people leave this earth they are welcomed onto the yearly space rocket that asends into the heavens. After a month of travel they land on Pluto, where the big farm in the sky is. That's where your pets and grandparents are.
That makes sense, thank you
That sounds way too close to Hale-Bopp /Heaven's Gate.
It's nothing like that.
I charge a lot more money.
Sign me up!
Off topic but I just checked and their website is still there. Feels macabre.
sounds like someone never learned about Xenu and the other earths.
Tsk tsk tsk. What are they teaching in school these days...
Ah, a fellow OT III.
It's a common English phrase that refers to dying. The use of "earth" uncapitalized refers to the ground or land, not the planet Earth. You might be more familiar with the variant "leave this earthly plane," which, by the way, has nothing to do with airplanes.
This is how I would want to go. Look up BBC Horizon 2008 How to Kill a Human Being. Explains everything you need to know. Seems like states don't want to do it because people wouldn't suffer during execution. Maybe things have changed since then.
Is it really an execution if there is no suffering? /s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_bag
To me it seems like they're trying to make the process more acceptable to the public so they can delight in more of them.
Folks who are confused by this, your body doesn't detect when you're low on oxygen, only when you have too much carbon dioxide. That's why exhaling while holding your breath helps you hold your breath longer (to an extent). Nitrogen doesn't caused the sensation of suffocating while still depriving you of oxygen.
I disagree with capital punishment but have always wondered about this for stuff like assisted suicide.
That's the thing, we all have to compromise. I don't support it either, but if something unethical happens, and people still want to keep supporting it, we have to at least convince them to use the "best version" of said thing so it's at least as humane as we can make it possibly be. I'm shocked we still continue to use these complicated and ancient methods of execution that have questionable reliability or ethics when it comes to suffering.
It'd be interesting to see how it would be used for AS for sure!
Over this summer I've been trying to break my record for holding breath underwater. 2:13 was best I could muster but in my experimentation, after slow and steady initial breathing and reduced muscle usage, inhaling one giant breath at the end and holding definitely let's me stay under longer. This is better until the CO2 saturation of my lungs equals the saturation in the blood. Then, for whatever reason, slowly trickling the air out buys a little more time. This probably helps calm and fool the brain into thinking you're desaturating.
Unless you have COPD. That's why's it's dangerous to give high flow O2 to people with COPD.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5461124/
I'm definitely against the death penalty but if they're gonna do it anyway this seems like one of the better options
theres actually a thing called nitrogen narcosis. while i still find states that use the death penalty abhorrent, its one of the nicer ways to go. while breathing a pure oxygen-defficient gas you also dont have a feeling that you are suffocating since you can breathe off carbon dioxide just fine. thats why exit bags are a thing in the first place
You can't breathe carbon dioxide like you can breathe oxygen. Nitrogen works well because it's soluble in the body and will replace oxygen, meaning aside from the mental effects, you don't notice it.
CO2 doesn't work the same, though. It won't replace oxygen and will produce a feeling of suffocation.
That's what he's saying. You can exhale the CO2 and breathe in the nitrogen.
CO2 is what causes the burning sensation in the lungs when you hold your breath too long.
Not entirely true. CO2 won't reabsorb but the inability to get rid of what's already there will cause it to build up. It's the presence of excess CO2 that causes the body's suffocation response. This is why people sleep right through being suffocated by CO and why they theorize that nitrogen will have the same response
for diving it is quite different though.
Nitrogen high starts (with normal pressurized air) at around 40m depths which means 5bar pressure or roughly 4bar partial pressure for the nitrogen. It then starts getting into your synapses partly blocking them.
even with 100% pure nitrogen at normal pressure you just get 1bar. So you wont get high from it.
Content warning >!linking to a method of suicide!<
Not going out on a morphine high?
I get that it is 'humane,' but I get scared when I see humans developing and organizing highly efficient ways to exterminate humans, such as gas chambers.
WIRED: Pig Slaughterbouse CO2 Gas Chambers
Suffocation cannot possibly be considered “humane.”
The US frankly terrifies me these days.
Nitrogen asphyxiation does not equal suffocation. It displaces the oxygen in your lungs. Discomfort from suffocation is from build up of carbon dioxide, not lack of oxygen. For the brief period of time that you are still conscious, you can still exhale that carbon dioxide.
That seems unlikely. As @protist@mander.xyz explains further down the thread, it would likely lead to generalized pain and terror before seizures and death.
@protist is talking about nitrogen narcosis, which is a completely different thing.
No, they’re not. Read the post.
Yes, I did. Read my post.
They said:
Nitrogen narcosis happens because when you are under pressure, like when underwater, gases are more easily dissolved. The nitrogen that is in your body dissolves into your tissues and basically anesthetizes you to death.
Nitrogen asphyxiation, like what we're talking about here, is when the nitrogen that you breathe displaces the oxygen in your lungs. This causes the oxygen levels in your blood to drop, which is what kills you.
You said:
@protist@protist@mander.xyz said:
I have a scuba certification. I know what nitrogen narcosis is. @protist is clearly not talking about nitrogen narcosis. They're describing what would actually happen in the case of being forced to breathe pure nitrogen, which is straight up suffocation.
Captain, in my comment that you just replied to, I quoted them literally saying that they are talking about nitrogen narcosis.
In protist comment the “this…” after nitrogen narcosis is meant to indicate a change of topic to the OP. As in “X is boring this is pod racing. “ it’s ambiguous and a semi colon could have probably avoided this confusion. Or even just “what op is describing is”. Not that I think his comment is necessarily correct.
I give up. They very clearly said exactly the opposite, but if that’s where your reading level is, then you do you.
You are correct that I forgot that you have to be under pressure for narcosis. I have read about death from nitrogen asphyxiation and thought it induced it also. I am slonscuba certified and while I haven't been narcd, my dad has. You still get light headed and dizzy during asphyxiation from nitrogen due to lack of oxygen, which is part of being narcd but being narcd is worse because of absorbtion into the brain. Since.you are still breathing out CO2 you don't feel the panicking you're suffocating feeling, but it still takes 4 minutes to kill you. Though you will unconscious after a minute most likely.
So yes, you are correct I forgot that it takes pressure to truly get narcd but asphyxiation does still bring on similar feelings itself.
Yes he is. Nitrogen narcosis is from breathing compressed air with a high nitrogen blend. That’s why you need trimix with helium beyond a couple hundred feet. Otherwise you end up like my buddy trying to give fish your regulator.
Read. the. damn. post!
That guy is misinformed. He is talking about hypoxia which is what people commonly think of when dying from lack of oxygen, think of drowning. Hypoxia triggers the alarms in your body that cause the fear and pain you associate with suffocating due to the build up of co2 in the body.
With inert gases like nitrogen however it is different. Check out this wiki article, in the process drop down tab is provides a pretty good explanation on the matter
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiation
Not misinformed, I forgot it takes.pressure.to.get narcd, but asphyxiation does cause some of the same feelings. Narcd is nitrogen asphyxiation, but it has other effects, and the feeling is more intense before reaching total asphyxiation, and therefore it is easier to recover from. It takes the pressure for the nitrogen to bind to the oxygen receptors.
I can confirm from personal experience that breathing pure nitrogen is painless and not at all like suffocating. If you want, you can check my profile to find the comment or look for it further up in a reply to a different thread in this post
I’m glad you’re here to share this insight. Hope things are better now.
Wait, you're dead? I'm glad to hear it was painless.
Sadly yes, but I lived!
Had a hell of a headache/migraine the next few days afterwards though
So it was totally painless and then you had terrible migrains from something else?
The process itself of breathing in the pure nitrogen and going unconscious was completely painless.
When I woke up later on I had a terrible migraine that lasted a few days because not breathing in enough Oxygen will cause headaches and migraines. Had I not woken up though then there would not have been any pain from that side effect because I'd instead be dead
I know how it works, I know how anesthesia works. I know how a close range shotgun to the head works. It's painless. We should never be doing it. For me, I'll choose THC. Then, ketamine, then some NO2, then switch it to N. Then gulliotine.
Surgical tech here... why not just use Propofol? It's the shit we use to put people to sleep for surgery.
It kicks in FAST - when the anesthesiologist pushes that stuff, it can literally take like 5-10 seconds for the patients to go unconscious.
So... for the death penalty, hit em with the normal dosage to put them to sleep, then once they're confirmed unconscious, push the rest of the bottle... or a liter of gasoline... or chuck em out the window; it doesn't matter, as they'll be 100% unaware of the actual method of death.
Edit - turns out there's a lot of good reasons we don't just use Propofol - see comments below. Thanks for the insight, all!
The real answer is that the makers of Propofol specifically don't want you to use it to kill people.
Furthermore, if the US does use Propofol to execute anyone it will likely find itself suffering a shortage of Propofol to use as an anaesthetic in future.
@vithigar
They used to use thiopental, which is similar to propofol, with similar onset, both as an anesthesic and for lethal injection. Manufacturers stopped producing it because its use was controversial. Now it's not even available for anesthesia. It would suck if the same thing happened to propofol.
Because the people selling it don’t want to deal with the association with lethal injections
There you have it, qualified medical professionals refuse (and are not allowed to anyway because of the oath) to participate in executions. So the people administring whatever concoction is made are not medically trained nor usually even particularily knowledgable on the subject. And yes, this has caused a series of botched executions, to the extent that the most bloodthirsty states are looking at smimpler ways to execute. Hence this aricle.
They already render the prisoner unconcious when they administer the lethal injection. It's not 100% effective though, thus the search for a method that doesn't have the potential to horrify onlookers.
Because using your drug to kill people isn’t the best way to convince the public is perfectly safe. There would be a hundred TikToks talking about how anesthesiologists want to murder you with propofol and then claim you died accidentally on the operating table. Who are you going to believe, actual “doctors” or highly qualified TikTok influencers?
Yeah, no drug company wants to deal with that. That’s why governments have had difficulty sourcing these drugs and instead have been resorting to black market dealers.
Because the idea of it being a punishment, rather than remediation or simply mitigation, looms over all North American discussions about sentencing.
If they aren't miserable then it's not a punishment.
In the case of Propofol they did want to use it but were basically banned by the drug company.
But.. the whole reason we are having this discussion is because people are trying to make the process less miserable in their final moments.
Just imagining the reverse, if they used propofol commonly for executions and then you go for a surgery and the doctor informs you that you'll be getting the same stuff they use for executions, but don't worry it's a milder dose
I mean, they DO use midazolam and the same paralytics for lethal injection that are also commonly used for anesthesia, just in a lower dose.
Let him rot in prison.
ABOLISH CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
That's how it should be. But as with most things, it comes down to money. It's cheaper to execute.
It's really not cheaper in practice, the legal hurdles for the death penalty are more expensive to overcome than just keeping someone locked up for life.
It might get cheaper if you're executing in volume, like thousands of people, but then we'd be looking at a whole other sort of problems (like "how did we turn into China?")
It's not cheaper to execute. It's financially and morally very expensive.
Watching the murder states scramble for new ways to murder as they run out of unethical people willing to sell them murder supplies has been interesting.
"Smith was one of two men paid $1,000 each to murder Elizabeth Sennett on behalf of her preacher husband, Charles Sennett Sr., who was in debt and wanted to collect life insurance money."
Hold on, so why is he being executed? He wasn't the one who ordered the murder. It seems like lots of other people request murders but those people aren't sentenced to death.
Because he accepted money in exchange to brutally beat and stabbed a person to death. "Just following orders," has never been an acceptable excuse for an individual to commit a crime, but especially when it's not an order in a military hierarchy, it's payment and a voluntary agreement. Fuck him.
Sennet Sr. committed suicide the moment the police started to investigate him. That's why he's not about to be executed.
I don't think that was the argument being made. The argument, to me, is why sentenced to death instead of some other sentence. And, were the others that are also part of this crime sentenced.
The article doesn't seem to say anything about what happened to the others that are involved. Focused a lot on the execution method.
Sounds like the guy just did this for the money so I also don't understand why he's being sentenced to death. Should just be prison time. But, I don't have all the facts here.
He's sentenced to death because he committed a capital murder in a state with the death penalty and a jury found him guilty. "I did it for money" is not exactly a legal defense. An innocent person was still killed, and arguably doing it for money is worse. Fuck him.
The other guy involved in the killing has already been executed, over ten years ago. It's a well documented case and took me about a minute of Googling to figure out this guy isn't particularly being singled out for death and the other got a lighter sentence.
I personally don't believe in the death penalty, but also if he didn't want to be executed for murder, he shouldn't have committed murder in the deep south.
"Preacher."
Right, bro is just caught up in the rat race same as the rest of us
To be very, very clear, I do not support the death penalty but the rat race isn't an excuse to kill someone.
I don't think he was trying to find excuses.
Ok, but bear with me here, because for real, this is how I want to go, and how I plan to put down my fowl when they get too old to live comfortably, because there’s no stress involved to taint the meat, and I can feel comfortable with myself for giving them a good life with free roam, and a good end.
It’s incredibly humane. You feel nothing and don’t know you are suffocating. If you’ve ever breathed helium, you know what nitrogen feels like - literally nothing. This happened to multiple individuals in space because nitrogen is not flammable, and is why they now use 6% co2 in non-oxygenated spaces.
The body does not care if it has oxygen, that’s hard to test for biologically because oxygen is highly reactive, what it does test for is buildup of co2. As long as you can breathe out the co2, your body knows nothing.
So if they are going to kill other humans, this is the way to go. I don’t agree with doing that non-voluntarily, but if it’s going to happen this is at least humane.
Something I've been thinking about: for the victim, does it actually matter if it's nitrogen or a well-aimed bullet/axe/guillotine? For the onlookers, sure the nitrogen looks a lot cleaner, but instant death is painless too.
I’d argue, yes it matters.
Bullet might not be as well aimed as expected, considering some of the firing squad have blanks, and most of them probably don’t really want to be there.
Beheadings are reported to result in animated heads… and I would assume something like a waterfall of pain as the nerves from the body are severed but the brain, where consciousness lives, goes on for a bit yet. It might be quick, but it doesn’t seem pleasant.
Electric chairs, just look them up, same with lethal injection problems.. any “justice death” is basically torture.
At least they can’t fuck up neutral gas asphyxiation. It’s either deadly or you sleep through it and wake up with a nasty headache.
Always the conservatives trying to innovate on how to kill people.
because the medical companies they got their lethal injections from decided they'd rather not be associated with governmental killing.
then the foreign countries they bought from decided the same. so now they have to get creative.
Personally, I'd like to see a 500t press option: literally just drop a 500t weight on me from a 30' height. By the time my brains register any sensation they'll be strawberry jelly squishing out the sides of the press plate.
Except the unborn
And the undead
This isn't a new innovation and is actually aware of the science. I think, however, conservative elected officials will insist on continuing Capital Punishment and the world is forced to work with or in many cases against them.
Alabama:
Everyone else:
"Wat? It's just unusual it's not cruel y'all!"--Alabama, probably.
I am by no means pro death penalty, but I prefer this over the lethal injection. It's a very painful and horrifying way to go and not at all like the drugs they give someone for medical euthanasia, while suffocating on nitrogen is actually relatively painless.
How about fuck the death penalty instead
Oh yeah I agree, I just would rather that if it's going to be a thing over lethal injections.
Can someone enlighten me why it's so hard to find an execution method?
I mean, tens of thousands of teens manage to execute themselves with the content of an average bathroom. How can it be that hard to find a fitting method?
Especially if there are things like carbon monoxide poisoning which has been used by hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people to accidentally kill themselves without them even noticeing.
And if you want a method that's guaranteed to be painless, put someone's head into a large fires cutter and drop a 10 ton weight onto it from 50 meters height. In an instance, there's noting left that could feel weight.
Or ask Ocean Gate for advice. From what Youtube told me, submersible implosings happen within a few milliseconds and have so much speed and pressure that they effectively vaporize the people inside. Pretty sure that's rather painless.
First, no licensed medical personnel can participate since it violates the Hippocratic oath, so you have to design the protocol without any input from anyone who understands the human body well enough or any scientific studies because human experimentation designed to end a life is illegal. And then also carry it out without people who know how to find a vein, much less understanding what to do when things go wrong.
And if it requires drugs or complex equipment whose sole use is executions, very few companies are going to want that contract. It's not lucrative with no other uses, and you tarnish your reputation and possibly lose more lucrative contracts in less conservative states.
There are very few methods that are effective and painless for everyone and not messy since you want people to watch, including the victims' friends and families. That way you can justify the act, pretend that you're using it as a crime deterrent, and fewer people are likely to feel sorry for the person and stop future executions. And it has to be cheap because one of the justifications is that life in prison is so costly.
Honestly, the best bet for painlessness, ease of execution, and simplicity of the equipment and maintenance is the guilotine. But it's messy and most people don't want to see a headless body fall to the ground. And it's hard to find workers to clean up after.
But, you don't have to. You just get a butcher who knows how to do a carbon monoxide execution on animals and apply the same thing to humans.
All you need is to pipe the exhaust of an old gasoline engine into a room and be done with it.
Costs nothing, doesn't require medical personell, not even medical equipment. There are tousands of people in the US who routinely do it and it's as cheap as can be. All you need is an old car or a scrap engine, a hose and some gasoline.
But I guess, since it was the favourite form of execution of the Nazis, it would probably be pretty on-the-nose about how terrible the act of state-sponsored murder is.
The issue is this may be considered "cruel and unusual" punishment, and that is what lethal injection was designed to avoid. However, there are all sorts of problems with lethal injection in practice. Nitrogen would effectively be a better lethal injection without the complications (drug inventory, dosing amounts, etc).
The issue here isn't killing people. It's doing so in a way the defense lawyer can't argue against to a judge.
Tbh, the lethal injection with all that regularly goes wrong with it is super cruel and unusual.
And isn't murder in any instance cruel and unusual?
I was thinking about a 50t weight. 10x10x10 cube of steel, put you into a socket, have you stand in the middle, drop. by the time your brain could register pain, everything would be a few mm thick layer of you-goo. It'd work every time, and you wouldn't have to worry about the eyes blinking after, or the body running around like a chicken with it's head cut off. No brain function would upset the executed.
If I had to be executed, something like that would be vastly preferable to dying via asphyxiation whether chemical induced or atmospheric deprivation...
Without going on a whole dissertation, there are a lot of aspects that have to be figured out for a government sanctioned execution to occur.
You could in theory just have an officer whip out a shotgun and bang, problem solved, much like you mentioned with suicide. But when it's sanctioned by the government you have to be very discerning with a lot of different details.
No. It costs more to execute someone than keep them incarcerated for many many decades. We end people's lives because we have a justice boner and we imagine (incorrectly) that punishing people in this way will deter others from committing the same crimes.
https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/NELIS/REL/76th2011/ExhibitDocument/OpenExhibitDocument?exhibitId=17686&fileDownloadName=h041211ab501_pescetta.pdf
That's why I had the "and heinous actions" part. Life in prison is already a thing, we don't execute people who got life, as you said it's more expensive. But I suppose I could have better phrased it as "their actions were heinous enough that we don't believe they deserve to have the right to life within our society".
ie Justice Boner. Life in prison is already separating them from society. We just like the feeling of state mandated murdering of murderers.
It was so surprising to me when that serial baby killing nurse was in the news before her sentencing and headlines were speculating that she might get a rare life sentence (she did, she got 7 consecutive life sentences). But even through all that, the British people were commenting "I hope she gets the mental health help she needs while she's in there" in sharp contrast to what US people usually say about hoping people suffer/are tortured/murdered in prison. Americans were voicing more gruesome hopes for Elizabeth Holmes' prison stay than Brits did about Lucy Letby. We're a brutal society.
I am solidly against executions and quite aware of the moral dilemata.
I was just on about how easy it actually would be.
Tbh, I don't think that's an issue. Carbon monoxide is used in slaughterhouses worldwide. You'd think if it's safe enough to handle for unskilled workers at industrial scale that a few highly paid executioners could use it without blowing up the complex.
Case in point: even the nazis managed to handle it at industrial scale 80 years ago. And their budget for an execution wasn't remotely as high as the US has.
I mean, it's probably not as sexy, because it directly shows how straight-up evil the practice of state-sponsored murder is (you know, using the same methods as literally the Nazis did), but then again, if you are a murder state, you are already past the point where you had a right to discuss ethics and morals.
you're absolutely not past the point to discuss morals wtf?
you think just because people are executed the methods don't matter?
Tbh, yes. If you like state-sponsored murder, there is no point not using a simple, foolproof, painless method that is executed tens of thousands of times per day (on animals), just because it's the method the Nazis preferred and thus makes you look a little bad.
Mudering people already makes them look bad, and their mess with all these botched executions just makes them look bad AND incompetent.
It all has to do with the Pharmaceutical industry.
"tens of thousands" isnt even remotely close. A few hundred is more accurate. It's important to be realistic with these figures so people don't convince themselves it is normal to do.
Correct, my estimate was an order of magnitude too low.
Worldwide, an estimated 700 000 people commit suicide per year. https://www.iasp.info/wspd/references/
That's almost 16 million since 2000.
In the EU, that's ~56 000 per year (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/DDN-20180716-1).
In the US it was 49449 in 2022 (https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html), of which 6529 where <24 (can't find data for <20).
I didn't specify a country and I didn't specify a time frame. But your estimate of "a few hundred" is a number that would fit for "number of teens that commit suicide in the EU or the US in a 1-2 week timeframe", and that was certainly not the definition I was going for.
Brushing the issue under the table and trying to hide it will not help those who struggle with suicidal tendencies. Feeling like you are the only one going through this does not help. If you struggle with suicidal thoughts, you are seriously not alone. For everyone who does commit suicide, there are hundreds who struggle with the topic but manage to get past it. Please get help, you are worth it.
Part of the reason might be because lethal injection requires substances that are mostly manufactured in the EU and the EU refuses to sell it to the USA because they don't want it to be used for killing people.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-16281016
Isn't that how we're doing the death penalty anyway? We're trying to find a "painless" way to kill someone, but is there ever really a painless way to do this? I'd imagine even if I'm sitting in a massage chair with classical music playing it wouldn't matter if I knew that half an hour from now I wouldn't be leaving the room.
And we can't really ask doctors because doctors have taken an oath to "do no harm."
The death penalty is just a punishment no one wants to do (well, okay, I'm sure there are plenty of people that have no problem with it), but we've told ourselves that we have to do it.
Not only are there plenty of people who have no problem with it, there's plenty of people who will be upset the killing wasn't more barbaric.
And it's pure blood-lust. They know the criminal can never reoffend. They know the death won't bring back the victims or bring peace to their family. They know it won't stop other people committing the same crime. They weren't impacted by the crime in the slightest and don't seem to have any real compassion for those who were.
But they want to see the criminals fry anyway.
Threads like this make it extremely clear the the reason the western world isn't executing women in soccer stadiums is because the people who make those decisions said "no", not because it wouldn't draw a crowd.
Yup, if this takes off, we can absolutely expect people to start complaining that death row criminals are getting off easy.
People will pull out the usual excuses for cruelty in our criminal justice system "well, their victim didn't get a peaceful death!" and shit like that. As though making the perpetrator (and it's always a possibility that they were falsely convicted) suffer an agonizing death will retroactively lessen the victims stuffering.
Its sick, but it's absolutely going to happen.
This isn't experimentation and it isn't new. I fucking hate this talking point. It's a well-established, safe, and potentially harmless method, unlike the shit we were doing before.
Still doesn't make it right.
Wether a country still has a death penalty ot not is a pretty good indicator for how civilised it is.
Most socially developed countries abolished it over the course of the past 100 years.
Another indicator is whether the people in a country still divide the world into "civilized" and "uncivilized" countries.
It is a spectrum.
But i hope you dont want to argue that falsely convicting and killing people, using botched methods involving a lot of pain and suffering can be considered civilised.
Every country can be considered uncivilized in its own way.
So... a spectrum.
No, a spectrum implies that a country can "more" or "less" civilized. But there is no civilizometer capable of such a determination.
It's the same reason why countries do not lie on a spectrum when judging whether they have "beautiful" or "ugly" inhabitants. Any attempt at a ranking is hopelessly biased.
Or just subjective.
I'll admit, it's an improvement over previous methods, though that's not saying much. Everything's normal, breathing fine, until lights out!
My objection to the death penalty is that sooner or later, it's inevitable, the law will fuck it up and execute innocent people. Some people just can't do adulting around this. Sooner or later, a crime happens, people clamor for blood, the state rounds up the wrong guy and railroads him.
It’s one of the more humane methods of assisted suicide. But also it’s the death penalty so not a good thing
Alabama should gas itself honestly.
Is it a moral alternative to provide the inmate with a choice of execution method?
6 million ways to die. Choose one.
I mean that's fair, but I meant more like "hey you can test this new method of execution, or you can have the lethal injection."
the state shouldn't have authority to do this but thank god they're at least trying to be humane now [an excuse to push for the death penalty more?]
i mean why is it even a question, i'd happily take this or a simple bullet over the horrible nerve acid shit they use now
That's their problem: The nerve acid shit makers had a change of heart and stopped making it.
It's a bit of theatre IMHO most executions are extra judicial thank to
Dreddcops.If you really want to execute someone and NOT botch it, nothing beats the guillotine.
Serious question. Why don't we just shoot them? I'm pretty sure bullets are cheaper than any chemical we use and it's instantly effective. You can't really mess it up either especially if you built a contraption the make sure the bullet hits the base of the skull.
Or fuck even one of those things they use for cattle. I just don't understand why we seem to choose expensive options when the cheapest solution is right there.
Nitrogen is pretty cheap, and would be considered way more human. Bullets aren't an instant death, the cattle thing would be but considered brutal. Both a firing squad and cattle thing would be considered cruel and unusual punishment, the SCOTUS has already said firing squads are cruel and unusual. The classic three drug cocktail was painless but no one will.make it.
Nitrogen makes you feel.like.your drunk, nitrogen narcosis, until you pass out. It is considered painless.
But the real question you should be asking is, why do we even still allow the death penalty. Innocent people have been put to death. Or at least enough doubt that they shouldn't have been killed.
But revenge is more important then justice. /s
People always think of the innocent person who got off. I get that. But what do you do with somebody who has, say, shot lots of kids in a school?
Rehab? In what world could we let that person back into society?
Never said let them back into society. Knowing you will die in a 6x6 cell, alone, and unwanted by anyone in the whole world is far worse punishment then anything else I can imagine. But killing anyone, regardless of crime, or evidence, makes you just as much of a murderer as anyone convicted of that crime. Also, there is the possibility of killing someone completely innocent, what then? Oops our bad, but we killed 30 other bad people, so this one isn't a big deal?
Many people would prefer to be executed vs. being tortured for 50 years in a cell. Others wouldn't, though. Is it worse to imprison someone innocent for decades or mistakenly execute them? I'm not sure. People could take their choice, perhaps? That's pretty cruel too though.
So... Revenge then?
Is there some reason a prison is incapable of containing them until they die? The only two choices aren’t kill them or let them rejoin society.
I didn't mean to imply that - but I don't see how lifetime imprisonment is any more humane. In fact others arguing against the death penalty are saying it's worse which... Is confusing.
If it were your kid in that chair, you wouldn't give a shit what they'd done, you'd fight with your last breath to save them anyway.
Who you are doesn't matter.
Who they are doesn't matter.
Fight to save them.
If it were my 12 year old they killed I would be taking a different view...
because a huge percentage of convicted are later exonerated, and a large percentage that aren't are posthumously exonerated.
I'm talking about where there is zero doubt the crime was committed.
School shootings and the like.
You can't have it both ways. I only execute the absolutely guilty and never put someone in jail who is innocent. The world is not black and white. It's not as simple as you make it out. Innocent people who ere put to death by the criminal.justoce system, at the time we're beyond a doubt guilty.
I'm posting a hypothetical.
Every prosecution team will tell you there is zero doubt until the exoneration, at which point they'll say "hmm."
Also, you say "zero doubt in school shootings" but unlike folk-wisdom, the law actually does care about the minutae of culpability and is exactly the place to get into the distinctions between aforethought, meditation and whether or not they were responsible for their actions.
We can know they did it regardless of culpability.
Let's hypothesize a perfect legal system for sake of argument.
The 3 drug cocktail worked, but it was often a minimally-trained technician charged with placing the actual IV lines. I know most of us have had an IV sometime in our life with relatively little pain, but that seems not to be the case for some inmates. Anxiety, old age, obesity, dehydration, and myriad other reasons can make it more challenging to place a catheter.
Bullets and the cattle thing are both instant when they are fired at the right part of the brain. Why is more brutal and less humane? If it kills them immediately, then it’s as humane as killing someone gets.
Firing squads didn't shoot you in the head.
I didn’t say they should use a firing squad. I said they could shoot you in the part of the brain with a bullet that will kill you instantly.
And it is illegal per cruel and unusual punishment clause.of the Constitution
Why is it cruel and unusual to kill someone instantly with a bullet and not cruel and unusual to electrocute or hang someone?
It’s not actually written in the constitution that killing someone instantly with a bullet is a cruel and unusual punishment. It’s an interpretation of the constitution that is frankly bizarre considering the ways we do actually execute people.
Bullets are as instant death as it gets. For a couple bucks you can headshot someone with a 50 cal, you can vaporize the brain way before neurons can propagate... Literally impossible to feel pain physically
Humane isn't about the victim though, it's about the observers. Nitrogen is painless and it's not until the last moments the victim even notices, but in those last months there might be panic
If you disagree with my point, ask yourself... Heroin or fentanyl OD is probably about the cheapest and most pleasant death, why has it never even been considered?
I think fentanyl is a great solution, if you're going to allow the death penalty, which I'm against. And it's more than just a bullet. Read the SCOTUS decision that banned firing squads. The cruel and inhuman part isn't even the pain felt, it's the terror inflicted waiting for it to happen. Psychologically it is far worse waiting for a gun shot than an injection that will put you to sleep and numb you. Mentally there is a huge difference. It is psychological terror, and therefore cruel and inhuman punishment.
I would rather be shot than nitrogen then because I want to die sober.
People can survive gunshots (even momentarily), it's messy, and it looks scary. Honestly nitrogen hypoxia is not the worst way to go, I'd choose it over getting my brain blasted. Ideally we wouldn't do it at all.
It’s hard for the people doing the execution. That’s why the traditional firing squad gives some of the shooters blanks: so they can convince themselves they’re not the killer.
Pulling a lever in another room for a method that looks calm and painless is a lot easier for the killers.
I'm old school so I would just take a firing squad personally. Cigarette, blindfold, ratatatata drums, ready aim fire, the works.
So then PTSD treatments for the hired employees? Seems like a problem that doesn't require lifelong mental scarring of innocent lives, but who am I to say?
You act like there aren't plenty of bloodthirsty degenerates that would jump at the chance to kill someone for free.
Not everyone cares about human life.
But won't someone think of the poor executioners who voluntarily took a job carrying out state sanctioned murder?!? /s
This whole thread is lunacy.
By "innocent lives" you're talking about the people who just killed someone for money - the EXACT SAME THING this person is being killed for.
You say that, then all the crazy gun nuts who crave this imaginary scenario are horny for the chance to murder. Though they may be bothered if it's a white person. They'd shoot a colored person before you even have to ask!
That's why you get five guys to do the shooting so no one person is to blame. Give one of 'em a blank for good measure.
Oh well then they should feel completely innocent and no one will suffer from mental health issues. That's why people in the military don't have PTSD, because everyone knows if there's at least 5 people there, you're good.
/S
As opposed to the person who pushes the button to turn on the nitrogen? Or the person who pushes the lethal injection plunger into your veins? Or the person who throws the switch on the electric chair?
We're talking about state sanctioned murder so idk what you could possibly propose that insulates everyone from trauma.
All this because I said I'd take a firing squad by the way if it came down to it. My choice. Just back off dude seriously, idk why you're trying to start a ruckus over this.
Lol oh right. I forgot this is only a place for your opinions. My bad.
You're the one advocating for state sanctioned murder, why would I have to defend it? Lol. There are plenty of options without additional lives being ruined.
At this point I'm convinced you are a bot designed to piss people off to drive engagement up, there's no way anyone can be so intentionally thick and contrarian.
I know it's hard to believe there are people that don't believe in capital punishment, but not everyone is a robot out to get you lol
All this because I flippantly said I'd take a firing squad! I find it easier to believe that you're a bot rather than a human being who made the decision to pounce up my ass over an offhand comment. Take a xanax and chill the fuck out, seriously.
Yeah, that’s still not going to help.
Firing squad is also incredibly inhumane and does not guarantee an instant and painless death.
A typical fart is 59% nitrogen. The implications are obvious.
The fact that regular air is 78% nitrogen probably doesn't imply what you are hoping lol.
I choose to believe this means there is a high concentration of fart in the atmosphere.
Redneck engineering?
Ok, so gas chambers again
Edit: my issue is not with the inhumanity, there is no way the state can humanely kill people. I’m wary that republican governments desire the kind of infrastructure that can quickly and cheaply kill many people at a time, boxcars full, in fact
No, this is far more humane. The state shouldn't kill anyone since the rate of false convictions is significant, but doing the wrong thing in a more humane manner is better than making an innocent person suffer even more.
So it’s a chamber you fill with a gas that kills people, but it’s not a gas chamber
A gas chamber, as the term has been used so far, is for a chamber where gasses that are not normally part of the regular atmosphere are used to kill someone in violently painful ways with a massive amount of suffering.
The atmosphere is almost 80% nitrogen, and this approach makes it 100%. It doesn't have the parts we need, but is not introducing something new.
It is not a gas that kills people, it is the removal of the gasses we need to live without the suffering caused by an increase of co2.
I wonder if you were in there, would you appreciate the distinction?
YES.
The normal gas chamber causes obvious pain and torment as people vomit and writhe in agony. 100% nitrogen puts you to sleep. If I had an incurable disease with a lot of suffering, or sentenced to death from a false conviction, I would absolutely choose 100% nitrogen over any other method of offing myself.
Well, I hope Alabama getting industrial scale killing capabilities is worth dying on this hill
Many ways of killing people can be done on big scale. Do you have some specific information about Alabama planning to make it large scale or are you worried because it includes gas?
What the fuck are you even talking about? Do you think they are going to implement industrial levels of death penalties just because they found a less horrific way to kill people?
"Industrial scale" is something you made up in this conversation. That was not done in good faith. Have a good day.
I really don't think it would be painless. Probably feel like you are being suffocated and breathe in more air only for it to be without any oxygen and feel even worse. The last moments would be pure mental torture.
As stated elsewhere, the discomfort that you feel what you're being suffocated is not from lack of oxygen. It is from build up of carbon dioxide. When you are breathing nitrogen, you can still exhale that carbon dioxide. You don't get that panicked feeling of needing a breath.
TIL. Thanks for the explanation. Guess i was wrong then.
It’s refreshing to hear somebody admit they can be wrong and learn from it. This platform is pretty cool.
You weren’t wrong. There’s an explanation by @protist@mander.xyz further down the thread. They make a convincing argument that nitrogen asphyxiation likely leads to generalized pain and terror before seizures and death.
I think you might be panicking because you know you will die regardless. But then again that's how all death penalties work.