Transcript
Alabama suffocated a man to death in a gas chamber tonight after starving him so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit as they did it. And this was deemed perfectly legal by multiple courts in the vaunted American legal system.
That’s what happens when you value institutions over people.
Link for more info: https://www.reuters.com/legal/alabama-prepares-carry-out-first-execution-by-nitrogen-asphyxiation-2024-01-25/
He wasn’t “starved”, it says right there in the article that he was given his last meal this morning (Thursday) and allowed no solids after 10am because he suffered from nausea and was worried he’d vomit.
It’s okay to be anti-execution but you don’t have to make shit up to be inflammatory, there’s plenty of other valid reasons to be against execution but making sure a man doesn’t choke on his own vomit isn’t one of them.
Plus they’re trying to say he suffocated like it was torture, no they used nitrogen specifically so it didn’t activate the body’s panic response to lack of oxygen. He just fell asleep.
Edit: he didn’t just fall asleep because he probably held his breath, according to the article, which I didnt read. In my defense I had a news app blocker on (clearly barely working)
And the reason that works is that your body doesn’t actually detect low oxygen. When you hold your breath for a long time, the sensation comes from high CO2 levels. That’s one reason that working in a hydrogen or helium airship is dangerous, because there can be a leak and you won’t even notice until passing out.
Shout out to Project Hail Mary for educating millions about this.
Also he specifically requested that they used nitrogen over other methods.
He later changed his request to death by firing squad, but I suspect that may have been a delaying tactic rather than an actual preference.
Which is so much better than injectables, which ARE torture. They get injected with a tranq first so they don’t show signs of struggle or pain when the actual death shot is given.
If fentanyl is so cheap, available, and deadly, why don’t they just use that? Probably because they want their pound of flesh.
Witnesses described writhing:
Smith appeared to remain conscious for several minutes after the nitrogen was activated, according to five journalists who were allowed to watch the execution through glass as media witnesses. Although the mask was also secured to the gurney, he then began shaking his head and writhing for about two minutes, and then could be seen breathing deeply for several minutes before his breathing slowed and became imperceptible, the witnesses said.
They think he was holding his breath, so the CO2 concentration in his blood would have risen. Between the CO2 build up and just knowing you are about to be killed, it’s not surprising he started panicking and writhing.
That’s what people miss when touting nitrogen asphyxiation as humane. It’s only humane if the person being killed willingly gives themselves over to the process and takes nice deep breaths. If they’re not willing to die of course they’re still going to resist to the best of their abilities and try and get the mask off.
They should just fill his chamber up with nitrogen on a random day of the week while he’s asleep
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At least part of that was attributed to him holding his breath for as long as possible once they started administrating the gas.
I totally get the impulse, but breathing in nitrogen wasn’t the thing that would harm him. It’s just lack of oxygen, which holding your breath isn’t going to help.
Legal execution is fucking sickening, It’s horrifying that we did that to him.
What’s even more sickening is him stabbing that woman to death, can you imagine how much fear and pain she went through?
Yes, and 2 wrongs make a right of course. /s
Or maybe it’s about vengeance and not about paying a due to society?
It is about vengeance and also about not perpetually providing room and board for someone who lost their rights when they decided to take someone else’s rights to life away.
Edit: why would they have an inalienable right to life, even if it is a meager life in prison, if they decided they can takeinnocent people’s lives for their own deranged reasons?
Yes, I think that should be illegal too! You’d have to be absolutely mental to want to kill someone.
“Writhing” (or maybe just convulsions that looked like writhing considering the restraints) after he no longer appeared to be conscious. NAD but my guess is this was a hypoxic seizure, an event of which he couldn’t possibly have been aware.
Edit: Assuming I’m right, and if we ever get to the point where this is proven to be a “humane” form of execution, then the convulsions could reasonably be prevented with muscle relaxing drugs the same way they’re are prevented during surgery or lethal injection… But I’d rather we just get to the point where we see the whole concept of retributive justice as inhumane.
This is pretty surprising, everything I’ve read indicates that he should indeed have been out in seconds. I wonder if the mask was a bad fit or the nitrogen wasn’t pure?
Definitely not seconds. If that were the case, simply holding your breath for a few seconds would be enough to make you pass out. That myth comes from chokeholds, which are not the same thing, and (when done properly) don’t actually stop the person from breathing. Instead, they put pressure on the arteries, to cut off the brain’s blood supply directly.
Actual asphyxiation takes several minutes, as the oxygen in your blood is slowly consumed. For nitrogen asphyxiation, you get a wicked endorphin high as your brain realizes it’s low on oxygen and releases endorphins to try and keep you awake. (Side note, this is why autoerotic asphyxiation is a thing. People do it intentionally to get that endorphin release and make orgasms more powerful.) But your sense of suffocation actually comes from high amounts of carbonic acid in your blood; Carbonic acid is from CO2, (it’s also what gives carbonated drinks that characteristic bitter taste, and is why flat soda tastes cloyingly sweet without the bitter carbonic acid to counter the sweetness.) Since the CO2 never builds up in your system, you never get the sense of suffocation. You just get that euphoric endorphin high, then you fall asleep.
Nitrogen asphyxiation is actually how I’d prefer to go out, if I got to choose. Like if I were in a lot of pain in my elder years and simply wanted to die, nitrogen asphyxiation is how I’d want to do it. But I also recognize that at that point it would be a choice, not something the state is forcing upon me. This dude was forced into it, which means there’s a much higher chance of him panicking regardless of the method.
This is actually not totally correct, take a look at @MyEdgyAlt@sh.itjust.works’s thoughtful reply to my comment below!
It’s definitely not just seconds. Think about how long you can hold your breath, you’d be conscious for at least that long. You start getting brain damage after like 4 minutes without oxygen, and can live for maybe 6 minutes.
Edit: I’m wrong here! See the reply for why.
I don’t think this is quite right. Read up on “time of useful consciousness”. I think if you exhale the air in your lungs and inhale oxygen-free air you’ll be out much faster than if you just held your breath. I’m not entirely sure if total pressure matters or partial pressure matters, but I’m quite sure that there will be some similar effect. I have found some claims that the partial pressure is the major factor, so breathing pure nitrogen seems like it would incapacitate someone faster than holding their breath does, because the nitrogen is actively removing oxygen from their blood.
You are totally right. I looked into it a bit, the mistake I made was assuming that we’re more efficient at extracting oxygen from the air than we actually are. A held breath contains quite a lot of usable oxygen, which we can extract over minutes of time. Breathing in nitrogen would rapidly replace that still fairly-oxygenated air with pure nitrogen, and evidently our blood doesn’t carry more than a few seconds worth of oxygen.
Thanks for the gentle correction!
He just fell asleep.
eyewitness accounts disagree
"Smith’s spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeff Hood, who’d previously expressed concern that the method could be inhumane, witnessed the execution and described it in more graphic terms, saying it was ‘the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.’
Smith, wearing a tight-fitting mask that covered his entire face, convulsed when the gas was turned on, ‘popped up on the gurney’ repeatedly, and gasped, heaved and spat, Hood said.
‘It was absolutely horrific,’ he said."
“Smith, who was on a gurney, appeared conscious for “several minutes into the execution,” and “shook and writhed” for about two minutes after that, media witnesses said in a joint report.”
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/us/alabama-execution-nitrogen-what-we-know/index.html
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Also leaving out the fact that the executed and his lawyer both said this method was preferential to lethal injection.
As soon as I read starving I thought that person was an idiot
Honestly, if I were to choose suicide, I’d go for a nitrogen slumber. Seems like a painless way to go.
They didn’t seem to do it correctly and it took a while. It described in the article but it is horrible.
Death penalty in the US and not doing it correctly, name a more fitting duo
Crazy how as our methods of execution get easier to watch, they get more torturous to the individual. Give me a firing squad or a guillotine any day. Y’all lethal inject me, I’m haunting your asses
People just… go to watch executions?
Interesting video, indeed worth a watch.
It sounds like he tried to hold his breath, not that they did it incorrectly.
Well the method itself makes it so people will try and hold their breath. I mean they know that once they start breathing their life will stop. You are right though.
It’s not like they could have practiced beforehand, but I get what you mean.
Hmm, I think I’d choose “cocaine overdose”.
Sounds fun but it would be a horrible way to die.
2 grams of heroin would be the way to go I would think
I have no plans now, but maybe I’ll try that during the sunset of my life…
Why not both! Speedball your way out like all the other greats!
This is straight out of Project Hail Mary. One person chooses to die by nitrogen. Another chooses heroin.
Really just 2 grams ? And nothing else ?
10? 100? Idc, shit is cheap.
Maybe just let them go full Tony Montana?
Too dangerous. You might mis-judge the amount and just end up having a good time.
It’s the way the suicide pods work, apparently
It’s literally the way I wanna die. How many Alabama Republicans do I gotta do in to get done in like this?
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The death penalty is a reason not to consider the USA a civilized country.
Among many. Extrajudicial Executions are far more common than official ones. And the police rob more money of people than all other criminals combined (excluding white collar crime, of course). So yeah, totally civilised.
And the death penalty is not legal in many states, but cops murdering people in the streets is legal in all 50.
Literal whataboutism:
What about Japan?
Cause people apparently need help:
Japan is generally perceived as more advanced on a variety of issues, but has recently been in the news regarding an execution. It’s for that reason I asked about Japan.
I asked about another country to learn about the speaker’s perspective, was it specific to the issue, or some other factor. They replied.
What about it? Capital punishment is wrong, no matter what country.
Literal whataboutism…
What about this other country? Hmmmmm?
Do you believe Japan is a civilized country
Not in the law department, just like any country that still has the death penalty. Especially because the Japanese prison system is based on the idea of punishment, not rehabilitation.
If they have the death penalty: no
What’s with this stupid trend of taking what someone says about one thing, applying it to a different thing, and acting like they’re contradicting themselves? For fucks sakes, assume the person you’re talking to has consistent views. If they say that the death penalty is a solid reason not to consider the US civilized, then it stands to reason that they would feel the same way about Japan, or the United Arab Emirates, or Qatar, or any of the other 50ish countries that still kill people as punishment. What about what they said would imply otherwise???
It’s not a trend. I wondered if their opinion was more about America, or a very different country, or a topic like the death penalty. It’s a common conversational pattern with which to highlight the core views of the speaker and identify if those views are tied to the subject (america) or the topic (death penalty.) Japan is generally seen as superior on many topics, but recently was in the news for ruling on an execution, hence was the example I raised.
They replied that they think Japan is the same, are thus logically consistent, and I was satisfied.
If they had said Japan IS civilized, even though they too have execution, that would be logically inconsistent and problematic.
Th crimes these inmates committed are so fucking despicably heinous, and yet the government wants to kill them in the most humane manner and you think that makes them not civilized?
The problem with that is that the government decided I did a crime. A pretty bad one. I didn’t do it. There’s no convincing anyone that I didn’t do it even though there’s zero evidence(because I didn’t do it). Now I have a felony.
I’m certain this happens to anyone the police decide not to like.
I definitely have a problem with that and wrongful convictions, this is a valid criticism.
It’s nice to see someone take criticism well.
The government regularly executes wrongly convicted people in our name. That’s enough of a reason to ban the death penalty. Even if we granted that some people deserve to die, the government is going to get it wrong with some degree of regularity.
Going beyond that, the justice system should be about preventing crime, not inflicting punishment. So yes, if there’s going to be a death penalty, it’s right to take every possible step to make it humane.
I was not talking about this case in particular but yes, of course I do think that. The method of killing makes no difference at all and to describe a method of killing as humane means to trivialize it. There are several reasons for my position. Just a few:
The death penalty violates basic human rights.
Perpetrators who are in prison are no threat to society. That means killing them is nothing more than an unnecessary cruelty, based on a medieval understanding of the law, based on the idea of revenge.
One murder cannot make up for another murder. The victim is dead and killing the murderers will not bring her back.
Governments should not kill people and in general, killing is wrong and should be avoided. Exceptions might be very certain situations of self defense, which are rare.
In countries that still have the death penalty, it also regularly happens that innocent people are executed. In the USA for example, this happens more frequently to black people, the reason being racism in the police and justice system.
Would you still feel the same if the person being put to death was responsible for torturing and murdering your loved ones? Is it uncivilized of a government to consider the victims feelings in these kind of cases?
I was always on the fence with it, because I do agree we probably shouldn’t give the government power to kill people, but when I put myself in the victim’s shoes in certain cases, I completely understand the want for corporal punishment. Sometimes people do something so fucked up that it seems healthy for the community to just put them to death for it.
It’s hard for me to say that the death penalty is absolutely never warranted, but I do think it should be very rare, and there should be an extra burden of proof to condemn someone.
Would you still feel the same if the person being put to death was responsible for torturing and murdering your loved ones?
No, since I am not mentally developed enough, I could not be rational but would instead be driven by feelings of hate and revenge, which is exactly the reason why verdicts in murder cases must not be based on the feelings of the relatives of the victim.
when I put myself in the victim’s shoes in certain cases, I completely understand the want for corporal punishment
Understanding such feelings is trivial. However, satisfying the victim’s family’s need for punishment on one hand and justice on the other hand are two very different things. The concept of “an eye for an eye” dates back to antiquity and has long been outdated.
It’s hard for me to say that the death penalty is absolutely never warranted, but I do think it should be very rare, and there should be an extra burden of proof to condemn someone.
I disagree. In any justice system, no matter how thorough, mistakes and false convictions happen. Also, societies always run the risk of slipping into authoritarianism and using the death penalty to eliminate opposition. See my comment above for more even reasons, they all apply.
Would you still feel the same if the person being put to death was responsible for torturing and murdering your loved ones?
Yes. Some of us apply our moral code universally, rather than letting our feelings decide whether killing people is okay, as long as they wronged us specifically.
Is it uncivilized of a government to consider the victims feelings in these kind of cases?
Yes. Justice systems based on individuals’ feelings are how witch trials work, and it’s how we add more names to this list. Victims’ feelings aren’t evidence, and should not be considered when talking about capital punishment.
Sometimes, the person that you’re 100% certain committed the crime actually didn’t. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if there was even a sliver of a doubt that we didn’t get the right person. How can I ever know for certain? Even eyewitness testimony is often flawed. Did I see that guy, or did I see someone who looked just like him? I’ve seen my own doppelganger in my city, I know better than to think I can flawlessly identify someone 100% of the time. They confessed? That’s compelling evidence, but again, I know full well that police can coerce confessions. If they maintain that they did it and they don’t feel sorry right up until they die, then maybe I won’t feel bad if my testimony gets someone killed, but otherwise life in prison is an equally effective punishment, with the added bonus that if we were wrong, we can release them and try to find the real perpetrator.
Yes, the government killing their own citizens is uncivilized, no matter what they’ve done. Some people may deserve it, sure, but the government does NOT deserve the power to do it, period.
But are you sure they committed those despicable heinous crimes?
Like 100% sure?
Or will you be killing an innocent?
I think this is an unnecessary complication. Let’s assume we do know 100% they actually did. I believe the other commenter would still believe it is wrong for the government to kill them.
On the one hand, many people who oppose the death penalty, myself included, agree that even in a situation where we know that a person committed a crime with the kind of absolute certainty that’s only possible in thought experiments, we would still oppose the death penalty.
On the other hand, it’s not an unnecessary complication, because that’s one thing that sways some people to this side of the debate–we don’t live in a thought experiment, so we can never be absolutely certain that the person being killed actually committed the crime they’re accused of. We can come pretty damn close–I challenge you to find someone who believe Dennis Rader or Darrell Brooks is innocent–but as long as we’re executing them, we’ll be executing Cameron Todd Willinghams and Walter Bartons and Carlton Micheal Garys. It just isn’t worth it. Let them rot in prison, and if evidence comes out that they didn’t actually commit the crime, release them.
Yes. The depravity of another does not suddenly make it ethical to be shitty. It is only when that shittiness is necessary to prevent further harm and these people are relatively simple to contain. If we had some sort of fucked up super villain scenario where you can’t even contain the person, then it becomes ethical to consider killing them but otherwise it is just the state and it’s population committing a murder for the sake of it. For a show.
“Starving?”
I bet surgeons hate you
Yeah, I was STARVED so I could have my wisdom teeth removed!
Bluntly, choking on your own vomit is probably a really terrible way to die. If I recall correctly he was put in a chamber where the majority of the air in the room was replaced with nitrous oxide, asphyxiating the subject. If he had choked on his vomit, it would have been closer to drowning than suffocating in the manner that was intended.
By asphyxiating him in this way, his suffering was effectively eliminated during the execution; but if he had vomited and choked on it… Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever found yourself short of air in a body of water, but it’s a pretty unpleasant experience. It only gets worse as you get closer to death when drowning (from what I’ve heard/understood from people who have nearly drown).
The intention of not giving him food so he didn’t vomit, was a humane decision, not intended for additional suffering and cruelty.
Twisting the intent like this is doing a disservice to the entire process. You can dislike capital punishment all you want, and I may even agree that it shouldn’t be done, but the fact is, this statement is misleading at best. I’m all for a healthy discussion on it, but let’s not conflate the issue with these misconceptions.
I believe it was a mask with nitrogen.
That’s my understanding as well. So since I don’t see anyone else saying this in detail here goes:
I am not a biologist or a medical professional, but this is my understanding of the process.
The human body does not monitor blood oxygen levels. When you or I hold our breath, the feeling of urgent discomfort we feel is due to a rise in the carbon dioxide (more specifically the carbonic acid) in our blood. Inhaling pure nitrogen will still allow CO2 to exit the bloodstream, so if someone is not made aware of the fact that they are breathing pure nitrogen, they won’t even know they are dying.
This person knew they were being executed, which I can only imagine induced a ton of stress and anxiety, yes. However, if you were to tell me that I was being executed tomorrow but I could pick which of the methods currently employed in the US I would be killed by, this would be at the top of the list.
If you want to argue that executing people is morally wrong and we should stop, sure, let’s have that discussion. However, we don’t need to characterize this method as more inhumane than others to do so.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. I for one personally believe that capitol punishment is inherently inhumane and shouldn’t be practiced in a functional contemporary society.
That said, nitrogen asphyxiation is by far one of the most humane execution methods employed today and, on paper, shouldn’t cause the victim any pain, discomfort or distress. If you actually look at the symptoms of nitrogen narcosis and hypoxia you’ll see that pretty clearly.
In this case, as the article explains, the victims suffering was self inflicted as a result of stress, distress, and previous medical conditions.
To paraphrase the article, a previously botched execution via lethal injection years before resulted in ongoing nausea. The man expressed concern that this could cause him to vomit in the nitrogen mask which could have caused him to drown in his own vomit so he was starved for 10 hours prior to prevent this from happening.
During the actual execution, the victim reportedly attempted to hold his breath as long as he could before struggling against his restraints for as long has he retained consciousness. This is just a stress response to being executed, not a side effect of the execution method. It’s not an uncommon reaction to various other execution methods like gas chambers or lethal injection.
If you want inhumane execution methods, lethal injections are often botched and typically in extremely painful and torturous ways.
Arguably, the most humane, quickest, and most reliable painless method would probably be something like the guillotine but I’d be surprised if that got widespread support.
Again, by no means do I support capitol punishment but as execution methods go, this is probably the most humane way we’ve tried so far.
The guillotine?! Which your brain/consciousness can stay functioning for 30 sec and up to like 4 min? That is better than nitrogen asphyxiation?
Now by all means by your criteria, yes it is fast and there is very little room for failure. However I think we still don’t know if it is as painless as we perceive it to be with how long you can stay concieous.
Regardless I am also of the same mind that we could move away from capital punishment as a society.
Unfortunately it appears they didn’t use a system which extracted CO2 from the air supply.
This is problematic with a mask vs. a chamber the CO2 concentration within the mask would have increased.
That would mean CO2 would not leave the lungs.
So the CO2 probably did build up in his blood and he experienced a suffocation sensation as if he held his breath.
We know how to kill people humanely. That was not the way this was done.
Even if someone wanted to die, this would have been an inhumane thing to do to someone.
Wouldn’t a guillotine be the most foolproof and painless method? The idea sounds a bit primitive, but it’s fast and effective I’d say.
I’d take that as an option personally at least.
There’s no evidence that it’s painless and there is evidence that you stay awake and aware of what’s happening to you for several seconds after you are beheaded.
We have no means by which to determine that death by beheading is not painful.
We do, however, have plenty of examples of nitrogen hypoxia, it’s effects and the sensations associated with it as you die, by people who were either revived or recovered from situations caused by nitrogen hypoxia.
Personally, I would be okay with death by nitrogen hypoxia, if I either wanted to, needed to, or were forced to die before the end of my life naturally. I presently have no desire to die, nor any need to, nor have I been sentenced to death (or any sentence) for crimes (of which, I have not committed any).
So my opinion is just that, an opinion. I would vastly prefer to continue living at the moment; so I’ll just stay out of trouble with the law by doing the same things I always have, and hopefully my health doesn’t cause the situation to change.
Death by beheading doesn’t sound very nice, but bluntly, it’s hard to screw up with something like a guillotine. Since law enforcement (specifically those in charge of executions), seem to be inept, the guillotine may be a better option, since it would be much more difficult for them to do in a way that’s so incorrect that it causes more suffering than what is normal for that process. IMO, that’s the only significant merit to something like the guillotine. It’s so basic they would have to try, in order to do it wrong.
Nitrogen hypoxia sounds more humane, indeed if done correctly. Otherwise the explosive taped to the head sounds pretty foolproof as well like some people suggested. Perhaps a bit disturbing though.
But I agree, the first step should be to not get into a situation where you’re facing this in the first place. But if we have to choose, good to have some options in mind.
Probably the most painless, foolproof method would be an explosive, just strong enough to turn the entire head into a fine mist, placed right at the base of the neck. The explosion propagates faster than neutron activation can happen, so by the time it would be possible to feel anything, the brain no longer exists.
You’re right. And you also probably meant NEURON activity 😉
Haha. Yes I did. Though if it would help, I also wouldn’t object to reversing the polarity of the neutron flow. 😁
Agreed, that sounds the most foolproof.
Think about how a guillotine works. It cuts off your head from your neck.
Think about how your body works. All of “you” exists in the head. You are dependent on everything below the neck to keep the head alive.
The guillotine doesn’t kill you. It separates “you” from the system that keeps “you” alive. It cuts off oxygen and energy from the brain. It is essentially suffocating, but without the muscles to suffocate.
So you are likely fully awake and aware of your surroundings. You are, in effect, holding your breath until you die, but also aware that “you” are in a tiny basket, separate from the things that keep “you” alive.
No thanks.
You know this smug motherfucker?
That’s Antoine Lavoisier, 18th century French chemist. Brilliant man. This is the guy who named oxygen. One of the founding fathers of the fucking metric system.
He was executed by guillotine during the French Revolution for adulterating tobacco. In reality, he had invented a process for curing tobacco in a way that made it more difficult for retailers to cut or modify tobacco, and the retailers really didn’t like that. He was an aristocrat prior to the revolution and, well, you can see how that ended up.
Anyway, he told his buddy to count his blinks right after his head was cut off.
His buddy counted 12.
Lavoisier was exonerated a year and a half after his death.
“La République n’a pas besoin de savants ni de chimistes; le cours de la justice ne peut être suspendu.” (“The Republic needs neither scholars nor chemists; the course of justice cannot be delayed.”) Judge Coffinhall, who sentenced Lavoisier. He himself was executed three months later
“Il ne leur a fallu qu’un moment pour faire tomber cette tête, et cent années peut-être ne suffiront pas pour en reproduire une semblable.” (“It took them only an instant to cut off this head, and one hundred years might not suffice to reproduce its like.”). Mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange on his death.
I heard that story as well; not sure what to make of it though.
If I understand it correctly, the pressure of your blood is gone right away, circling you in an unconscious state. Blinking could be a reflex of the last thing you were doing. But even if you do stay focussed, 12 seconds seems a lot better than 20 minutes. To be fair though, we don’t know how long it ‘feels’, perhaps longer than the actual seconds.
A grenade bound to the head would be more humane then perhaps. If you don’t care about the body. I’d go for that if it was offered.
That’s really the tricky thing about the death penalty. Nobody alive really knows what it feels like.
Tough to get volunteers for a controlled study, too. At least under current ethical guidelines.
High explosives, easily the least painful way to die if it’s very close to you.
You are right, that’s better.
guillotines are probably the worst pain possible. you ever hear of phantom limb pain? try your entire body
Humane methods involve putting people to sleep, not violent destruction (which includes deliberate suffocation, for any retards about)
firing squad is i think the most commonly agreed upon method, beyond what we do for (legally consented) lethal injections and MAD.
lethal injection was a mistake, electrocution was a mistake. The british canon execution is ironically, probably the best option.
He took 22 minutes or so to die. Guards in the room said it was awful to watch. His suffering was INCREASED by using this untested method. But then that was surely the point…
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This guy was scared of dying and held his breath. The struggle against the restraints was because he didn’t want to die, not because he suffered.
I’d inherently call that suffering. Borderline torture, if I’m being honest.
I also see a lot of people claiming that he was rebreathing his own air for 22 minutes (which is abhorrent if true) but I have seen nothing to support this claim.
Well, him holding his breath is a choice he made. I’m not sure that was a process error, or anything that could have been prevented except to sedate him as the other poster suggested.
I’m not condoning it or justifying anything, I’m just pointing out a fact. He wasn’t getting out of that chair alive, he chose to do a thing that would prolong his life (and by consequence, create significant suffering), all for a few more minutes of existence.
Again, I’m not in favor of this or any kind of capital punishment personally. I just see the rationale from all sides and I can make an unbiased observation from the information. That doesn’t and shouldn’t imply that I agree with the rationale or that I condone it, I just understand it.
If people must be executed, nitrogen hypoxia is one of the least painful and most humane ways to go about it IMO. I’d rather they just were not executed, but even my opinion on that can vary; it really depends on the crime and the proof available. But I won’t open that can of worms any further than it already is. It’s an entirely different discussion not relevant to the matter being discussed.
I feel bad for this guy, he suffered unnecessarily partly due to his own actions, and partly due to the ineptitude of the people administrating the execution. The method of execution is valid when performed correctly (again, if they must execute, this is a valid course in my mind on that… Their reasoning in giving someone that sentence of execution is up for debate). Nobody deserves to die in pain, as far as I’m concerned. People do, every day, but they shouldn’t have to. I don’t care who they are or what they’ve done or anything. If someone is dying, they shouldn’t have their last moments be excruciating pain. We, as a society, should be doing everything we can to prevent that. In some cases it’s unavoidable, like accidents and such, but in every case where we can let someone die peacefully and painlessly, we should be doing that.
I’m different. I don’t see death the same way as most people. Death is the inevitable conclusion to life. It will happen. Being able to die without pain is something I believe in, and everyone should have the right to live until they naturally reach death. I believe in medically assisted suicide, that an individual should have the right to die, and that shouldn’t be something that anyone can take away from them. For me it goes hand in hand with bodily autonomy; the right to choose what happens to your body (both in life and death).
There’s a lot more to the discussion than just what specific thing happened during this one person’s execution. I don’t really feel good about anything that happened with this individual’s execution. I think the idea of execution by nitrogen hypoxia is better than other methods, but there’s still a lot of problems, both with how things are done and why. It merits more discussion in governments at all levels. I don’t claim to represent the majority, but I still think there should be more discussion so that these issues can be agreed upon by the majority. I don’t think that discussion has ended, and certainly there’s a lot of opinions on it, so I don’t think the issue is resolved by any stretch of the imagination.
SOMEBODY POSTED A REASONABLE OPINION ON THE INTERNET!
GRAB HIM
I’m not stranger to getting down voted for posting a reasonable opinion.
I have a viewpoint and I’m quite passionate about that viewpoint, but I’m just one person. I don’t have so much pride as to think my opinion is the only valid opinion, and I’m not going to delude myself into thinking that my opinion is shared among the majority. I just don’t have that much hubris.
In this example, if the majority want capital punishment, and I disagree with that, I’m left with two choices: either I can suck it up and move on, like an adult, or I can leave to find people who are more in line with my opinions.
I’m not going to try to invalidate someone else’s opinion just because my opinion is different.
can you reasonably call holding your breath voluntary in this situation? i dont think my holding my breath if someone holds my head underwater is a particularly conscious decision
Yes. Nitrogen hypoxia is something our body doesn’t naturally have a system to detect.
With drowning, the body knows that it’s not getting air, you choke on the fluid as it tries to enter your lungs. The body detects and rejects the incoming fluid.
Nitrogen is a natural part of the atmosphere, it’s the majority of the air we breathe, making up over three quarters of the gases we breathe in and out in normal atmosphere. Nitrogen doesn’t harm the body in this context, or any breathing context, to my knowledge.
Our “suffocating” reaction is typically based on CO2 concentrations. Basically, if we can’t get rid of CO2 through breathing and it builds up in our bodies, we get a suffocation reaction.
Interestingly, the body has no mechanism for monitoring O2. So as O2 levels drop, our body has no reaction to it.
So what happens with nitrogen hypoxia, is that the atmosphere can still accept CO2, and that can leave our system perfectly fine, and it doesn’t build up, which robs us of any biological detection that we are suffocating. Meanwhile since the atmosphere is absent of any concentration of O2, we don’t get any oxygen to add to our system. Since we don’t have a biological way to detect that, it goes largely unnoticed. In the case of nitrogen hypoxia, your CO2 concentration in your blood is never more than what is expected, but your blood O2 saturation falls. Typically, your blood O2 (or SpO2) is somewhere around 95% for a healthy person. Most people can survive unassisted with an SpO2 down to about 85-90%. When you start to dip below 85%, in a medical situation, like a hospital, you would be placed on oxygen to raise it back up, but you probably won’t die from low SpO2 alone at this level. You start risking death below 60% or so.
So what’s happening to the subject in the example above is that you get light headed as your brain and body are deprived of oxygen, this is one of the first signs. You may feel weak and tired. You may even get a bit delirious or giddy. As the SpO2 falls further and further, eventually your brain won’t have enough oxygen to continue, and you will lose consciousness. If the condition continues, then your body will shut down and cease it’s normal functions (like your heart beating, or breathing); and you will discontinue living.
We know these effects in detail because many people have both intentionally and unintentionally experienced this. The effects are well known, and more than a few people have unintentionally died from it. Nitrogen hypoxia is basically undetectable by your body. Nothing feels different about the air you breathe, and you simply get light headed, and eventually fall asleep to die. People get trained to recognise the symptoms if they work with nitrogen products, and if they’re ever in situations where nitrogen hypoxia is possible, and likely, as an effect of their work, for safety. I believe high altitude pilots get this same kind of training. I don’t believe commercial airliners count, since they’re not exactly skimming the atmosphere, and if they have any decompression of the cabin, they’ve been trained to drop to a lower altitude for this exact reason. Anyone climbing very tall mountains may also get training like this.
It’s a very dangerous situation to be in, but not scary when you experience it (unless you recognize what’s happening - which most people won’t).
There was no indication or biological function that caused him to feel the need to hold his breath. He only intellectually knew that he was going to be terminated in this manner a chose to hold his breath. He had no other reason to do it. His body wouldn’t have sent him any danger signals to hold his breath, nor did he have any discomfort that could have indicated that he should have. Only because the mask (or whatever apparatus) was placed on him with the nitrogen flowing. It’s tragic that he chose to fight against it in this way. His decisions made his experience a very unpleasant one. But make no mistake, they were conscious decisions on his part. By holding his breath, he would have had a build up of CO2 which would have felt like suffocating. He induced that in himself, and eventually when his SpO2 dropped to the point where he passed out, he breathed normally and perished anyways.
He make a conscious effort to survive in a situation he would not survive through, and created his own suffering in that moment.
Are you really saying that people are at fault for not wanting death?
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No source is actually claiming that, and I’ve only seen one person claim rebreathing was taking place. It was most likely just him holding his breath.
Idk man…something def wasn’t Right cuz even inhaling both CO2 and nitrogen gas at the same time should have killed him faster I think. Someone fucked up.
100%
I cannot see how this was more humane than chemical injection.
chemical injection or lethal injection as its referred to is ABSOLUTELY worse than this.
Lethal injection comes with the fun side effects of rolling the lottery on the anesthetic, the paralyzant. Or the cardiac arrest agent.
not enough anesthesia? Now you’re gonna feel all kinds of pain while not being able to move, at all! Not enough paralyzant? You can still move, and now it looks inhumane! you fuck up the both of those? They can feel it AND move, now it’s a fun experience for the WHOLE family! you mess up the last one? They won’t die! Oops.
Also failed injections, there have been numerous cases of failed injections leading to horrific chemical burns under the skin. There have been instances where prisoners were found with tons of injection sites. Implying that they failed repeatedly.
The best part? the ratio was cooked up by some dude who wasn’t a medical professional, and just went “thing to numb the pain, thing to stop them from moving, and a thing to stop the heart. NOW MY CONCOCTION IS PERFECTED!”
This is why manufacturers don’t sell the components anymore.
forcibly ending peoples lives just isnt humane to begin with. But given the option between the two, nitrogen hypoxia is better.
A helmet of high explosive would be extremely painless.
give em the ole spicy vest
Man, that’s crazy. Almost as crazy as stabbing Elizabeth Sennett to death in her home with fireplace pokers for $1000, then living another ~35 years on the taxpayer dime, and finally being executed for murdering a woman 36 years ago. ¯\(°_o)/¯
An eye for an eye leaves the world blind. How does killing him improve the world, that keeping him locked up wouldn’t?
Your platitude is bullshit. Eye for an eye has always been a deterrent for most. Gotta kill the rest. Like u said. U can’t let them out. Why kill him? Cuz that’s the definition of justice when he killed someone.
How is him sitting in prison justice? It’s not.
That is your definition of justice. I personally believe that a murder in response to a murder just makes two murders. I don’t see justice in that.
they cant let him out because our penal system is dysfunctional and doesnt work.
I’m baffled that ANYBODY thought it was a good idea to begin with.
Eye for an eye has always been a deterrent for most.
this is why countries and states that allow execution invariably have lower crime rates
Cuz that’s the definition of justice when he killed someone.
i think justice is when my family doesnt get murdered in the first place because of policies that actually reduce crime, im quirky like that
it’s more expensive to execute people than imprison them for life.
According to this, as of 2015, the cost to incarcerate a man for 1 year in Alabama was $14,780.
As we all know, costs have skyrocketed since 2015, but let’s be ultra, ultra generous & say incarceration costs were a flat $10K/yr until 2014. 25 years at $10K/yr, $250K.
Let’s pretend inflation somehow never happened, 2015 - 2023, 9 years at $14,780. $133,020.
$133,020 + $250,000 = $383,020.
Inmate at one time requested firing squad, and death is death, so let’s say the bullet cost $2. You allocate an additional $4,998 for staff to perform firing squad duties, party balloons, party hats, and confetti. $5K & 5 mins…vs. 35 years & $383K++++, only to end with a more expensive & contrived execution style, more suffering, and the exact same end result. Death is death.
So about a million dollars, or 5 times cheaper than the median cost of the death penalty.
The median cost of a death penalty is $1,250,000
Even without your estimating and looking up the actual numbers — actual cost of lifetime incarceration is 800k, so in real life it’s only twice as expensive to execute someone. Also the equivalent of about 3-4 years salary of a corporate Director or VP
And that’s not even considering that incarceration has fringe benefits too. Through study, analysis, therapy and statistics we can learn how to prevent tragedy in future — not the case with execution.
You’re missing all of the lawyers fees to get to stop the execution.
What detailed and informative take. Thanks Butt Pirate!
The method wasn’t untested, it’s been done plenty before. The specific tools they used to do it were moronic and they didn’t fully understand how to do it properly. Basically they just didn’t do their homework.
There’s also the difference between “painless” and “easy to watch”. Lethal injection looks humane because they inject the person with a paralytic, so regardless of what happens it looks “peaceful”.
One of the drugs sometimes used (succinylcholine chloride) is fucking terrifying, because it’s a paralytic with no anesthetic effect. Given alone a person under its effects is aware of what’s going on while paralyzed and unable to breath.
Christ that’s scary af.
Medically it’s generally used to intubate someone in an emergency if the patient is conscious, seizing, etc. If the patient is aware, it’s given in conjunction with something for sedation like a benzo.
In an execution it’s given after a barbiturate for sedation , then followed with potassium chloride to stop the heart … assuming mistakes aren’t made, or something goes wrong.
That’s fair. I’m not up to date on all the specifics of this particular incident.
Them basically “winging” it, kinda fits.
Is that true? Where did you hear this?
The United Nations and European Union have already put out some public statements regarding this (well, about this new method), it was pretty big news (internationally). Apparently official reports say he was visibly shaking and had cramps during the execution…
Sennett was found dead in her home March 18, 1988, with eight stab wounds in the chest and one on each side of her neck. Smith was one of two men convicted in the killing. The other, John Forrest Parker, was executed in 2010.
Prosecutors said they were each paid $1,000 to kill Sennett on behalf of her pastor husband, who was deeply in debt and wanted to collect on insurance.
Yes, a complete barbarian. We have them too, but we aspire to be better than just being equally barbaric in return. That’s why civilisations do justice, not revenge.
I’m good with revenge.
Chances are, an innocent person has been killed because of the death penalty. That alone has me against it entirely.
That’s a chance we are just going to have to take.
How many innocent people are you ok with murdering before it’s no longer worth it?
Last I checked the guy they Nitrogen’d wasn’t innocent.
How many guilty killers are you ok with escaping punishment?
I am ok with every guilty killer not being executed if it means saving a single innocent person. Note that I did not say that I am ok with them being released.
I ask again, how many innocent people are you ok with murdering before it’s no longer worth it?
Do they just let them go free if they don’t execute them?
Apt username.
“It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer” - William Blackstone.
Buddy are you so deprived of empathy that you have no problem with sending innocent people to their deaths? Are you okay with cops playing judge, jury, and executioner? Lot of innocent people die from cops deciding that its okay if that guy is dead.
No, I’m happy to send this guy to meet his maker.
Literally avoided my questions. Why are you okay sending someone who is innocent to death?
what if it happens to you or your family? then is it still worth it?
I don’t see any “have to” in here at all. To me, that just looks like a desire to have the state murder people. That’s not justice.
I think executing someone who was convicted of murder is justified.
Elizabeth Sennett’s family can now know some peace. Don’t take it from me, feel free to read their direct quotes below:
_What was the stance of the victim’s family? “Some of these people out there say, ‘Well, he doesn’t need to suffer like that,’” Charles Sennett Jr., one of Ms. Sennett’s sons, told the local station WAAY31 this month. “Well, he didn’t ask Mama how to suffer. They just did it. They stabbed her multiple times.” Another son, Michael Sennett, told NBC News in December that he was frustrated that the state had taken so long to carry out an execution that the judge ordered decades ago.
“It doesn’t matter to me how he goes out, so long as he goes,” he said, noting that Mr. Smith had been in prison “twice as long as I knew my mom.”_
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/25/us/execution-alabama-kenneth-smith.html
Who’s moving goalposts now? A decision being “justified” doesn’t mean it’s “a chance we have to take.”
How is that a morally coherent stance? You’re basically condoning state-sanctioned murder.
I’ve made it clear in multiple posts. I’m on the side of justice.
We don’t have to, though. We can just put them in prison.
Or we can execute the guilty, either way is fine with me.
The problem is that if you get it wrong even once --and we know for a fact, through things like The Innocence Project, that many innocent people have been executed-- then it’s the state committing murder in our name.
Morally I’m not OK with that. Are you?
I’d rather err on the side of caution.
Again, we only have to get it wrong once, which we know we have done, and it’s basically the state murdering an innocent citizen.
How many innocent citizens are you OK with murdering?
Morally I’m ok with that, no system is perfect. We should strive to be as accurate as possible, but in the end we can only make the best conclusion based on the facts at hand. If a jury finds those facts compelling enough to vote to execute a defendant then so be it.
even for 1988 thats not a huge chunk of money. poverty is the biggest driver of crime. imagine if we reinvested all the money we pour into prisons into actually taking care of people
Yeah, and you know what stuck out to me in the article? That the conservative justices said, he was “gaming the system” for too long with…appeals and requests for stays…and that justice wasn’t done until he was murdered.
Like…he was gaming the system by rotting in prison? So these arbiters of justice think justice is only an eye for an eye and these prisons they adore so much are not brutal enough?
Sounds like the husband killed her with his wallet. He wielded this guy like the guy wielded a knife.
It’s absurd to think that killing him would really bring any more peace to the children than destroying the knife.
If anything, having to bear witness to endless appeals and proceedings for 35 years prolongs their torture. I’d really like to see a form of justice that focuses on ensuring the peace and stability of the victims and their family rather than the pain and suffering of the perpetrators.
Man fuck that, someone stabs my mom to death over a measly $1000 and my dad kills himself because he’s the one who paid for it and I’m going to want that anger taken out on someone, better be the ones who did all this.
My dude killed someone for $500, literally doesn’t deserve to live in society and I don’t want to be paying for him to live outside of it.
I’m surprised so many people on lemmy are anti death penalty.
Two eyes for one eye?
Edit: maybe I’ve been misunderstood.
Better go after every hospital for “starving” patients before surgery
Prisoner requests:
Two chicken fried steaks smothered in gravy with sliced onions, a triple meat bacon cheeseburger with fixings on the side, a cheese omelet with ground beef, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and jalapeños, a large bowl of fried okra with ketchup, one pound of barbecue with half a loaf of white bread, three fajitas with fixings, a Meat Lovers pizza, three root beers, one pint of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream, and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts.
State provides.
Actually I’m not hungry.
State never grants last meal requests again.
Sure, but you could have the meal two nights before.
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love how we can murder criminals but if i want to murder myself legally, it’s impossible.
Thanks guys, very cool.
A handful of states allow medical death with dignity.
guess i really shouldnt be surprised by this. Though i am still surprised it was ever illegal at all frankly.
Good to know we’re moving in the right direction though i guess.
Based on how this man died, “dignity” isn’t the word I would use.
From the article I shared:
Death with dignity is defined as “an end-of-life option that allows certain eligible individuals to legally request and obtain medications from their physician to end their life in a peaceful, humane and dignified manner.”
We’re talking about an entirely different thing here. I’d recommend reading the article if this is the first time you’ve encountered the phrase, it’s eye opening and is something everyone will have to think about either for themselves or for loved ones.
It just seems the guillotine would be less painful than nitrogen asphyxiation.
Off topic
What’re they gonna do if you succeed? Put your corpse in jail? Kill you again? I mean, say what you want about it: suicide is the only crime you can get away with 100% of the time if you succeed.
i think the fail state here is fucking it up. And being alive still.
You can be involuntarily committed for that shit.
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Just be a criminal then?
Ain’t nobody got time for being on death row for 20 years
If not for how they would likely treat me behind the scenes, it would almost be tempting since my money keeps disappearing into bills and fees for things that are mandatory and mostly don’t even benefit me
Suicide in some places makes you a criminal. There’s a tasteless joke here somewhere, but I’m too tired to find it.
Suicide in some places makes you a criminal
Only if you do it wrong.
Is that what you were going for? I wouldn’t say that is tasteless. Poor taste, sure, but it does have taste.
I was thinking other actions weirdly categorized as crimes. It’s too bad that anything targeting the corporate overlords is treated as worse than murder.
i think i would rather just do the “usual suspect route” and pull out a shotgun and engage with “advanced strategy”
And then leave a rather humorous note, to hopefully not traumatize whoever the hell is left to clean that up, and probably some money for them as well.
And this was after botching a first execution where the execution team had some questionable judgement
This is what happens when education systems fail. They produce people who don’t know what the hell they are talking about.
I’m assuming this person isn’t intentionally trying to deceive.
Glad my state is in the news for something other than cousin fucking.
How about we stop killing people that were convicted? Oh wait, it’s the USA we’re talking about…
but hey, electronic governers for all cars so they can’t go more than 10mph over, pastors stealing millions cuz “jbro said so”, just to pull evidence from my lemmy front page today.
humanity will never learn to value individuals over institutions and we will never evolve beyond this due to that.
The AG said it went according to plan and will happen again.
This is what happens when you won’t take up arms against the government.
Pretty much all of the rest of the developed world didn’t have to have a coup in order to come to the conclusion that the state killing people is wrong.
The rest of the developed world isn’t politically stuck in the early 20th century.
