Judge suggests change to nitrogen execution to let inmate pray and say final words without gas mask
A federal judge who is weighing whether to allow the nation’s first execution by nitrogen hypoxia to go forward next month, urged Alabama on Thursday to change procedures so the inmate can pray and say his final words before the gas mask is placed on his face.
U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker made the suggestion in a court order setting a Dec. 29 deadline to submit information before he rules on the inmate’s request to block the execution. The judge made similar comments the day prior at the conclusion of a court hearing.
Alabama is scheduled to execute Kenneth Eugene Smith on Jan. 25 in what would be the nation’s first execution using nitrogen gas. Nitrogen hypoxia is authorized as an execution method in Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma but has never been used to put an inmate to death.
The proposed execution method would use a gas mask, placed over Smith’s nose and mouth, to replace breathable air with nitrogen, causing Smith to die from lack of oxygen.
I think public executions where the prisoner is tortured to death are more progressive than supposed "humane" methods.
Not because I like cruelty or think they deserve it, but I want the State to do it's killing out in the open where citizens are exposed to what's happening in their name. Hiding the act behind closed doors and beneath a cloak of "humane" methods allows the State to exercise ultimate authority in secret from the people from whom that authority is derived. It's the State and the supporters of the death penalty that are being spared pain.
Yes, I got this from Foucault.
You highly overestimate the amount of compassion the average person has. If you torture people to death in public people will sell tickets for the best seats. The Romans built a whole damn arena for this purpose.
If anything, I think it would normalize killing (even more). But I guess I get where OP is coming from: Governments shouldn't get away with killing a human by claiming it's a humane act.
Yes! you're correct. It will be spectacle and celebration. We may revel in our cruelty, but we cannot feign mercy.
The question of capital punishment comes into focus. I don't trust in compassion; I'm advocating for honesty.
I can’t tell if you’re joking or if you think people have the same morals as someone from the roman history
Have you seen the state of the world lately? I'm surprised we don't have the football stadiums converted once a year for this
The Saudis do
The job of corporations and media and politics is to divide people. And even more so it will make you think your neighbor is a savage. It keeps people alone and independent workers to exploit. When in reality, your neighbors are average people that aren’t bloodthirsty. Most people can hardly handle their own lives and are depressed enough as it is without having a sporting event dedicated to killing people. I didn’t realize how well this propaganda type stuff works but clearly it does.
When Nazis stop going across the country having hate parades in my state I'll agree with you.
You’re right, I’m sure the majority of your state is politically extremist and would welcome blood sport.
We are historically a sundown state. The leading party is trying to ban books and change education curriculums. Our police showed up in riot gear for peaceful protests like when Roe v. Wade was turned, and those same police are literal klan members. We know this because during that Nazi rally I mentioned, the police in uniform were nowhere to be found. They were all photographed taking part in the rally. Yet these officers are happy to show up armed in riot gear at peaceful protests...
So yeah, I do feel that my state is politically extremist, and a number of people would absolutely welcome something like that. I wish it weren't how I felt and I wish it weren't the truth, but that's just the byproduct of 2016 and years and years of Fox News and other propaganda "politicizing" peoples identity.
Most of the state? As individuals definitely not, there are many against our state government who actively campaign. We get targeted, followed home, and assaulted for being queer, for being activists who dare try and speak out against hatred at peaceful protests. And yet despite all of us, somehow all those asshats are still getting elected with no policies made to protect these citizens.
I'm not trying to be facetious here. I believe in goodwill first and foremost and doing the right thing over doing nothing, and I always have hope for the best in people. But after 2016, fuck, after January 6th we have to be better than optimistic. We have to hold people accountable, and that means recognizing the actual state of the world we are in, which means recognizing that yes, there are people right now who would argue for a bloodsport. To them it would be bonus points if it was LGBT+ and POC participants.
The only way to come close to changing is by acknowledging our faults as a whole and do as much as we can to remedy them. We have to be compassionate while being completely intolerant of their hateful bullshit and insane rhetoric.
gestures around at the lack of empathy tons of people are all proud to display
points at all the anger when making violent sports safer or pointing out the long term damage cause
It's easy to forget, but we have the same brains as back then. Societal values may have changed, but there will be those with a sick fascination who want to see. When the bath school massacre happened (1920s I think?) People took home souvenirs.
Nothing suggests to us that the morality of Roman times is capable of existing now. You say “societal values may have changed” but that’s the entire thing. They’ve changed. We have shifted the society to where this kind of public torture would never happen. It can happen again and people are capable, but not unless society shifts.
And the trends show that while people are divisive, their morals are very closely related. You may not agree on abortion but most people agree we shouldn’t kill prisoners inhumanely.
People completely misunderstand morality. People are not currently capable of tolerating this kind of thing. If you think so, do a survey and I’ll eat my hat.
Societal values change all the time and not always for the better. Let's enjoy the values we have now, they might not be present tomorrow.
r/watchpeopledie was popular enough to reach the top of r/all quite regularly before NFSW was filtered from it, and had half a million subscribers. There's still plenty people in today's society that would enjoy a medieval style public torture and execution.
Honestly I think you'll find they're not aa different as you wish they were. people are as cruel today as they've ever been.
Cruel enough to torture people in public? Get a grip on reality.
What planet/version of reality are you living on/in? This literally still happens in several counties.
Tell me you've never watched a Republican primary debate without telling me.
Nearly every election cycle there's at least one debate where the death penalty comes up and you have governors competing with each other over body counts to an audience cheering them on.
None of what you said represents average people
I suspect you overestimate the average person.
Saying that people would enjoy public violence is a pure fantasy. No average person is going to go to an execution, they’re barely even favorable and only because it’s “humane”. Most people are nonviolent. Most people will never see anyone die unexpectedly or intentionally. Most people wont ever seriously injure someone.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session
Most people are only non-violent because the violence is socially frowned-upon. When given an acceptable outlet for savagery, humans have no problem being savage.
This is also how riots form.
What Foucalt gets wrong here is that historically, civilians just enjoy it. They don't find it barbaric or inhumane.
Like there wouldn't be some national conversation about "what have we become" - it'll just be a fun thing people do.
So easy to build a sealed room. Why use a mask in the first place? Slowly exchange air for nitrogen and the prisoner dies saying his pointless prayer. Never even knows it happened. No suffering, no nothing. Just lights out. Then re exchange for air so the body can be safely collected. This is not rocket surgery.
That sounds like the plan they have already just with an entire room rather than just a small mask. It's the same thing except your plan requires more gas and a bigger dedicated gas chamber with more failure points.
Yep, more expensive.
Why use a mask: because it's cheaper, and helps secure the people nearby (in case of a room leaking, that's a lot of displaced air, while a mask or similar leaking is significantly less of risk in case of uncontrolled release). But I bet mostly because it's cheaper - and remember, it's never been done before (by them, for this purpose).
But like 15 states have gas chambers. They aren't used because all they ever tried was cyanide or carbon monoxide, both of which caused significant suffering. But the effects of nitrogen have been known since the birth of scuba. Cheaper has never mattered. Lethal injection is incredibly expensive, as is running the electric chair. If cost actually mattered hanging or firing squads would be the go to methods. I've personally never been able to grasp why it matters. Why shouldn't these people, who have caused untold amounts of suffering be made to suffer on their way out of existence? These are serial murderers and the like. Personally I think we should add serial rapists to the list of executable offenders. I simply do not understand why the worst of men should receive any kindness at all. They gave none to their victims. And so fucking what if they are remorseful. If you commit atrocities you should be handled in kind and definitely do not deserve to be kept alive like some pet of the state fed on the taxpayers' dime.
And what if they didn't do it? What if you brutally torture someone to death and later a key witness reveals that they lied? Or evidence proving their innocence isn't discovered until decades later. It happens all the time.
It's not a "what if."
One in 8 sentenced to death is later exonerated.
Most executions take years or even decades to even happen and scenarios like you suggested are extremely rare.
It's more like 16% sentenced to death are innocent. The point of the seemingly endless appeals is that the process is so fucked already more than 15% of the initial sentences are changed during appeal because someone somewhere fucked up... And you want to add more people to this process?
Stop swallowing the GOP lies. That sort of conservative bullshit belongs on Fox. Leave it there.
There's something wrong inside you.
I'm just pragmatic and the rest of you seem to be controlled by knee jerk emotional responses. You waste a lot of energy having to have feelings about everything.
Who else do you think deserves to be tortured to death?
Because cruelty.
But it is brain science
Person fucking dies that's like the ultimate suffering i can think of, holy fuck killing people can't be made humane no matter how many different methods are used
I don't think you know what the word suffering means.
Physical or mental pain someone experiences dying will definitely be mentally painful if you know its gonna happen and once someone stops responding and the brainwaves go spaz i don't think thats especially nice either not 100% sure as i've never Been braindead
People aren't given the death penalty for giving out flowers and candy.
Yeah 1 in 8 are given it for no reason at all and later exonerated.
agree and i think there are some circumstances where Kipling someone is justified but its never ethical, especially if the Person doesn't Pose a threat anymore
How exactly is something 'justified but not ethical'?
If something saves more people by killing some the action of killing few is unethical however because it saves more the action is just
Everyone poses a threat to everyone. The question is to what extent. Of course, you have no idea what you're talking about, so there's that.
Ad hominem
There are absolutely bigger pains of suffering besides certain deaths.
Have you died yet? its certainly the worst thing i can imagine
Luckily no but there are absolutely things I fear worse than death. To each their own I guess
This i can agree with but for me its death
Fuck you're stupid.
You are and Werke mad of a series of poor choices i don't envie your Patents
You have a very poor imagination.
ad hominem
Well, there isn't anything else of substance to attack, so what passes for your character is the most effective way to let you know what a piece of shit you are.
Arent you the guy who wants to kill people? Like i try to be a pacifist but your steamed turd of a persobality stinks up my house through the screen
Luke, I am your father.
What if we stop executing people entirely?
No, that would be to moral. Unchristian even.
Being executed is a pretty Christian thing to do - though I'm not sure nitrogen is du jour.
OK. I mean, if that's what the inmate is requesting, why not allow it. He's gonna be put to death anyway. Personally I don't believe his "praying" will be of any use, in this life or the next - if there is one- because I don't believe in that religious nonsense, or that someone can be "forgiven" for any crime involving murder anyway. But what's the skin off anybody's anus if he wants to be executed this way? That should at least be his decision to make.
The point is cruelty. People are objecting to execution by nitrogen because the prisoner doesn't suffer enough. That's the right-wing mentality in a nutshell. They think torturing someone doesn't make them bad people if that someone "deserves" it.
Good lord. The man probably already lives in a mental hell every single day, what more cruelty does his situation require. Adding more torture to the procedure certainly won't right any wrongs he may have done, and only unbalances the scales in the direction of bringing more cruelty into the situation than already existed.
Right, but for them, it's all about revenge and suffering. They don't care about anything else for anyone in prison. As far as they're concerned (unless, of course, it's one of their own), whatever the judge has ordered, that's what you deserve.
Now I admit, apart from the cases where the death row inmate was exonerated, in general, the crimes they've been found guilty of are particularly horrific and atrocious, but we should be better than them. That's what Republicans don't seem to get. You shouldn't sink down to the level of actual convicted murderers.
That's a great point, and one I've tried to make to people (without much success) many times. If you become as cruel and fueled by revenge or hate as the person who did something terrible, then you've sunk to their level or even lower. Revenge never balances anyone's scales - it just weighs the side with EVIL in it down with even greater weight.
And I'm not against capital punishment, in some ways it seems a little less cruel than giving someone a lifetime sentence in prison. I do agree with you absolutely on everything you've said.
When was the country's most recent capital punishment before this one?
Oh wow, this sounds so humane.
I think it can be improved though. Just give him general anesthesia 5m before the nitrogen mask.
That should be the most peaceful way to go.
You know you fucked up somewhere as a society when killing people is considered humane.
I mean, some people really deserve it. There are some living monsters out there, and I don't believe in the sanctity of their life. I'd rather save a cow from a farm than save a serial murderer who raped the corpses of their victims. In my country these was this guy who raped, tortured and murdered like 60 children. He's no longer people to me.
I do not need anything akin to religious holyness as a basis for respecting human life. I do not want to kill them, not because their life is sacred, but because I consider myself to be a decent human being.
Some of these people are also very much sick in a medical sense. Some are unfortunately the victims of former abuse. It does not matter what you think they deserve. If you want to be a good person you should help them (as in prison with therapy), because they clearly need it and you should be someone helping people in need.
EDIT: Just as I do not believe in religion, I also do not believe in monsters.
I think some people are in fact beyond help. They'd be a waste of resources that could actually help others who can change. Humans don't have unlimited resources, so assuming we can help every single murderer and child rapist until they are reformed and ready to join society is just idealistic and unrealistic. So even if you don't like it, this is better than letting them rot in a cell until they die of old age.
Plus, we're just little bugs on a tiny rock in a universe so big we can't even begin to comprehend. The only reason human life seems so important to you is because you're a human. Personally, I'd rather focus on people making society a better place and making others happy instead of putting effort on a guy who rapes, tortures and beheads children.
The only argument for the death penalty was back before long term prisons were available and someone was too dangerous to be released in society. The death penalty should be obsolete.
Crazy story: https://www.al.com/news/2022/11/former-sheriff-recalls-womans-horrific-murder-for-hire-by-pastor-as-alabama-prepares-execution.html
Did he allow his victim to pray and say final words?
It doesn't matter. We don't do eye for an eye here.
Literally what the death penalty is. If what you said was true we would be working on rehabilitation.
How dare you undercut their platitude with reasoning.
The death penalty is not an ultimate punishment for a crime, in it's most logical sense. It is based on a conclusion that an individual is 'beyond saving', evidenced by the actions they commit. Eliminating them from existence is the only guarantee they never do a similar action in the future.
There's plenty of reasons why this reasoning falls apart , though - namely that quite often you can't be 100% sure you have the actual culprit, or that they are actually 'beyond saving'.
A person beyond saving could still be left in prison for life and at least treated humanly. We kill them because what they did is so bad we want them dead. People try to pretend otherwise but thats what it is. Simple as that.
And honestly I get it. I fully think some people should die for what they did. But, like you said, we run into the problem of how often our shitty legal system gets the wrong person which is why I don't believe in the death penalty despite the fact I think some people should just die.
I agree with the first part, though not the second. I doubt most judges view the death penalty as a pointless act of spite, and view it more as a logical removable of an irredeemable agent.
My rationale on it is different. I think that if someone commits a heinous action, they either did it for a logical reason or an illogical reason. If it was logical to commit the act, then that is a failure of the system for creating perverse incentives, and change must occur to remove such incentives. If the person committed the act for illogical reasons, then there is something wrong with them, and the should be treated as someone suffering from something. If the individual is deemed truly "beyond saving" then they are suffering a mental handicap and should be sheltered such that they aren't a danger to themselves or others.
By this logic, there is never justification for a death penalty.
Murderer put to death. Don't do eye for an eye. Hmm OK America.
I fundamentally oppose the death penalty, but if a state is going to insist on doing it I want them to do it as humanely as possible. It should never be done as "revenge."
In one of the articles about this case it was said, "we do not teach those not to rape by raping them."
Actually, yes. this is Kenneth Eugene Smith, who was convicted in a 1988 murder-for-hire slaying of a preacher's wife. Elizabeth Sennett, 45, was found dead on March 18, 1988, in her home in Alabama's Colbert County. She had been stabbed eight times in the chest and once on each side of neck.
In all actuality, there is no information saying that he did or did not allow this, but I did learn a lot about this case. Turns out two guys were hired to kill this pastors wife because the pastor had an affair (doesn't make sense but it is what happened). These two guys, one of them stole things to stage a burglary. He was put to death in 2010 and his last words were to her sons, "I'm sorry. I don't ever expect you to forgive me. I really am sorry."
The other, currently on death row, agreed to beat her, but apparently did not intend to kill her.
After the pastor became a suspect, he drove to the gathering, told his sons what part he had played (hiring a crew to kill his wife and himself having an affair), then got into his truck and shot himself.
It's a waste of life. Terrible decisions from three people that ultimately led to a severely somber outcome for everyone involved.
This isn't the Old Testament, fool
No you're right. America would absolutely never try to base legal decisions on religion. We are so far beyond that.
Wha....when did I say that?
You are saying that we wouldn't act like that because this isn't the Old testament and I am pointing out that we are trying very fucking hard to treat our legal system that way. That is literally what is happening right this second.
No, I made a shallow joke that you read waaaaay too far into. Get a hobby or something.
Probably not. But remember that ~4% of all death row inmates are innocent, so it may be that he didn't kill anyone.
Also, shouldn't the state be better than a murderer? Shouldn't the mere fact that we believe we, as a society, are civilized mandate allowing a death row inmate respect before they die?
I'm not religious, so I don't think praying and final words will do anything. But it won't harm anyone, and if it makes him more comfortable as he goes out, especially in light of the likelihood he didn't that to his victim, I'm not against it.
Should the state have the same low moral bar as criminals? (It's a rhetorical question that was answered when the state decided to murder someone that's not a threat anymore in cold blood)