jeffw‘Astonishingly cruel’: Alabama seeks to test execution method on death row ‘guinea pig’
AutoTL;DRThis is the best summary I could come up with:
Kenneth Smith is one of two living Americans who can describe what it is like to survive an execution, having endured an aborted lethal injection last November during which he was subjected to excruciating pain tantamount, his lawyers claim, to torture.
If the state of Alabama has its way, he will become the test dummy for an execution method that has never before been used in judicial killings and which veterinarians consider unacceptable as a form of euthanasia for animals – death by nitrogen gas.
The choice of Smith as the first candidate for the technique, less than a year after he experienced a failed execution, has also been criticized as a double violation of the eighth amendment protection against “cruel and unusual punishments”.
Earlier that year, the state took more than three hours to kill Joe Nathan James and later abandoned the execution of Alan Miller after also failing to find a vein.
“The mask will be placed and adjusted on the condemned inmate’s face”, it says, and then after the prisoner has been allowed to make a final statement “the Warden will activate the nitrogen hypoxia system”.
Like many death penalty states, Oklahoma was looking for an alternative to lethal injection, having struggled to procure the necessary drugs as a result of an international boycott by pharmaceutical companies.
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Didn’t he ask for that method himself? I’m sure he doesn’t want to try injection again.
Cruel? Nitrogen asphyxiation is probably one of the most painless, gentle ways to go.
Your trigger that you can’t breathe is a buildup of carbon dioxide. But as you can still exhale, you feel no panic. You just slowly drift unconscious and die. I’d take it over most causes of death.
Exactly, the headline is just trying to get people to react.
It’s people’s that want to ban the death penalty. They have already have succeeded in getting pharmaceutical companies to stop providing the drugs traditionally used.
Nitrogen, though, would be hard to ban. There is plenty of it, and it is cheap and easy to isolate. So they are arguing hard that it shouldn’t be accepted before they can prove how painlessly effective it can be.
There's a BBC documentary about it, I think this one:
It's been a long time since I watched it, but I think the inert gas route is very pleasant. He even gets slightly high/happy from it.
Key takeaways:
- there are surprisingly easy ways to kill people humanely.
- many in the US doesn't want to kill prisoners humanely, they want it to hurt and be a punishment, not die in a euphoric high
edit: found it:
https://www.documentarytube.com/videos/how-to-kill-a-human-being-2/
Rendered unconcious within 15 seconds, dead within a minute.
In testing pigs would happily stick their heads in a space with pure nitrogen and munch on apples till they lost consciousness, fell over, then stick their heads back in the space with nitrogen to eat some more apples.
Well yeah if we wanted it to be happy and comfortable we’ve had morphine for over a century
CurlyMoustacheMedical companies will not sell if they suspect it will be used to kill human beings. If they do, they might get banned in Europe
CzarrieWhat kind of apples asking for a friend
Do you like apples?
squibletYeah, compared to injecting horrifically painful substances, I don't see why this is controversial.
dmonzelExecution is cruel, regardless of method.
BaroqueInMindOpinion 👆.
Fact: it's necessary to remove certain people who are prone to violence and incapable of rehabilitation. If you have such a problem with execution, then volunteer your time, money, and home to accommodate a violent psychopath with you forever.
Shitty take. There are more than two options here, and suggesting otherwise is using an either-or fallacy as a bad way to try to win an argument.
IchNichtenLichtenKinda funny that you label the comment you replied to as opinion and then proceeded to dress your own (shitty) opinion up as fact.
Fact: when we sentence people to death we get it wrong one time in three
Fact: executing someone is more expensive than keeping them in prison for life
Ah, but it doesn’t have to be. There’s lots of inexpensive, humane ways to dispatch a human. How methods like electrocution and lethal cocktail injection were decided on is difficult to understand. Nitrogen, though, is probably the nicest way it could be done. Relatively cheap too, and with zero chance of failure.
The expense is in achieving that blistering 70% correctness rate, not in the way the condemned are killed.
Flying SquidIt’s not the method that’s expensive, it’s the appeals process, supposedly to stop innocent people from being executed. And even with all of the appeals, innocent people have still been executed.
Human medical experimentation on prisoners is cruel and unusual in and of itself. However well you personally think execution by nitrogen would go (and I doubt you’d volunteer), people on death row have a right to know we’re not trying novel execution methods on them. Maybe if what we’re doing doesn’t actually benefit anyone more than prison would and is considered so barbaric that European manufacturers won’t supply us with the drugs we need to do it, we should stop.
The mania for execution led Arizona to refurbish its gas chamber and reverse-engineer a Zyklon B equivalent.* That’s not the kind of country I want to live in. How about you?
There’s no experiment necessary in proving nitrogen as a silent and painless killer. Scuba divers have done all of the experiments for us, mostly by accident.
Imprisonment is barbaric.
If someone has done something so bad that they should be locked up for life then they should be dispatched not kept as some kind of morbid pet of the state. If you murdered a bunch of people (mass killing of serial style) you need not waste any more of our air. If you rape you should be killed too. If you’ve gotten yourself on death row fuck your rights.
Wait why is it more expensive?
The long appeals process we use to try to not execute the innocent costs a lot. It would be cheaper to just imprison them.
agent_flounderAlso opinion 👆
Opinion 👆.
Fact: punishments can be reversed, if the punished stays alive. Any percentage of unjust executions is irredeemable. Also, there is a lot of evidence that abolishing the death penalty either does not affect the crime rate, or it has a positive effect (see link below).
More opinion: executions have no place in a society that highly values human rights because killing people is the exact opposite of humane. If you think prisoners are monsters and you could never end up in there, watch a documentary about it. If you see what some ppl went through, you know how easy anyone can end up there.
Death Penalty - the ultimate punishment: Campaigning toolkit - Amnesty International
This toolkit contains eight factsheets: Towards abolition; Killed by the state; Secret executions; The death penalty: the Ultimate punishment; A life for a life: an unacceptable proposition; Does the death penalty deter crime? Getting the facts straight; Political sleight of hand: The death penalty is not an answer to crime; Is there a humane way […]
That’s as silly a comment as “if you think Native Americans were wronged, give your house to one,” something else I’ve heard people say. Societal wrongs are not solved by individuals.
Somehow all the countries that don’t allow capital punishment find ways to deal with extremely violent people and don’t have murderers running amok.
Somehow all the countries that don’t allow capital punishment find ways to deal with extremely violent people and don’t have murderers running amok.
You know what else is cruel? People killing other people. And the former continuing to live despite their cruelty.
The only rub against execution to me is the risk of executing the innocent. But that is not the concern here. There is no dispute this guy is guilty.
The only rub against execution to me is the risk of executing the innocent.
Right, so why is that not a total disqualifier then? Even if the risk is fleeting small, there is no taking it back. If it came out later on, dead is dead. Combining that with the fact that executions are obv a psychological cluster fuck for everyone who deals with it, especially the one executed, and the fact that it takes a lot of resources every trial because it’s such an unusually cruel punishment, the arguments for it are dwindling.
Also
You know what else is cruel? People killing other people.
Right but we’re not voting someone in office who can eliminate all homicides in the United States. Things are different for execution.
We could also talk about how this “well tough shit” opinion always fucks over positive and healthy change, but that’s probably the least impactful argument for the folks who still bank on executions as some sort of greater good.
Read the rest of what I said. There is no doubt here. I do think the death penalty should require a higher standard of guilt. But some people, through their actions, simply have forfeited their right to live.
Glad to have it straight from the moral arbiter of the universe, someone who feels they can personally determine, from a safe distance, whether someone has forfeited their life. Otherwise I’d be seriously worried the state was carrying out a horribly immoral practice that regularly results in murder of innocents in order to deliver, at best, the short-lived false victory of vengeance, for the low priceof permanently extinguishing of a human life. Which I’ll remind you doesn’t bring back their victims.
I am allowed moral opinion, same as you.
I know, me pointing out that the pompous way you phrased your opinion made it sound like you thought you were expounding on universal truths isn’t going to stop you. It wasn’t intended to. Maybe if you don’t want pushback next time, avoid the phrase “have forfeited their right to live.”
Stating my own opinion is “pompous.” Whatever.
I told you the specific language that sounded pompous, so if you could stop playing the victim, that’d be great.
Doesn’t ‘people killing other people’ include the state killing people? I don’t see how vengeance for a murder solves anything.
Why doesn’t it include that?
Because they are carrying out a judgement. We don’t toss prison guards in jail for false imprisonment. We don’t send IRS agents to jail for theft.
Lots of people carry out a judgment when they kill someone. They just don’t get to do it legally.
Oh, so it sounds like you do see the difference.
No. It’s killing people either way.
Do they survive in either? Did they die of some natural disaster or disease? No. They were killed. I don’t even know why you think this is arguable unless you don’t know what ‘killed’ means.
No, as you said, one follows the legal system, the other does not.
That has nothing to do with what I said in the first place. Whether it’s legal or not, someone killed that person. Again, I’m not sure why you’re disputing the fact that someone killed them. Do you really think ‘killed’ doesn’t apply if it’s legal? ‘Killed’ is not a legal term. You know that, right?
Murder is. And executioners are not committing murder.
Please show where I said the word murder in this discussion. Quote me please.
I didn’t say you did.
Well then I’m not sure why you’re trying to argue with me over the word ‘killing’ as if I said ‘murder,’ which I never said.
No, you are saying, as I recall l, that if we kill killers, then we should kill the executioner because all killing is wrong.
Where did I say that? Quote me please.
Nah, I’m fine with all the sealioning.
In other words, you lied. Got it.
You know what else is cruel? People killing other people.
Then why aren’t you advocating for executing those that execute killers? After all, they kill people. But I’m going to assume that you think those killers are okay.
Executions are generally set up so no one person is responsible for the person’s death. And they generally volunteer.
How are they different from a war veteran that killed somebody during war?
Executions are generally set up so no one person is responsible for the person’s death. And they generally volunteer.
Okay. Why not kill all those who might be the killer? If not, why allow the spreading of the responsibility? If two guys beat someone up and kill them, would you be as lenient, considering we don’t know which one actually killed them?
How are they different from a war veteran that killed somebody during war?
In war often there is no choice (at least if you’re defending - I don’t condone wars of aggression). With death row inmates we do have a choice! You understand the difference, right?
As I said elsewhere, because they are doing their duty. We empower people to do otherwise illegal things all the time. If some random guy demanded your tax records and wanted a percentage of your income, they would the charged with theft. When an IRS auditor does it, it isn’t illegal.
So you are ok sending the innocent to die, but refuse to condemn the guilty? I am sorry, I do not like the other choice. When someone kills someone else and we can prove it beyond any doubt, that murderer should not get to be housed, fed, and cared for for life. I get that it may even cost more, but that’s where I’d rather spend money.
As I said elsewhere, because they are doing their duty. We empower people to do otherwise illegal things all the time. If some random guy demanded your tax records and wanted a percentage of your income, they would the charged with theft. When an IRS auditor does it, it isn’t illegal.
So people killing people is okay if the right people kill the right people?
So you are ok sending the innocent to die
No, defending yourself is different from “sending the innocent to die”. If the choice is to die peacefully or to die fighting, the latter is the better option, since you might not die.
but refuse to condemn the guilty?
Where did I say anything about not condemning the guilty? Is killing other people the only way to satisfy your dismay for them, even if you’ll kill innocent people this way?
I am sorry, I do not like the other choice. When someone kills someone else and we can prove it beyond any doubt, that murderer should not get to be housed, fed, and cared for for life. I get that it may even cost more, but that’s where I’d rather spend money.
Then why do states with the death penalty keep killing innocent people, even though this is supposedly already the standard? You’re the one who wants innocent people to die.
Dude, it’s like you don’t even read my posts.
Dude, that’s like, totally your opinion, dude.