Alabama, unless stopped by the courts, intends to strap Kenneth Eugene Smith to a gurney Thursday and use a gas mask to replace breathable air with nitrogen, depriving him of oxygen, in the nation’s first execution attempt with the method.
The Alabama attorney general’s office told federal appeals court judges last week that nitrogen hypoxia is “the most painless and humane method of execution known to man.” But what exactly Smith, 58, will feel after the warden switches on the gas is unknown, some doctors and critics say.
“What effect the condemned person will feel from the nitrogen gas itself, no one knows,” Dr. Jeffrey Keller, president of the American College of Correctional Physicians, wrote in an email. “This has never been done before. It is an experimental procedure.”
Keller, who was not involved in developing the Alabama protocol, said the plan is to “eliminate all of the oxygen from the air” that Smith is breathing by replacing it with nitrogen.
I’m not sure why people obsess over the method. It distracts from the act itself.
It kills innocent people, and the appeal process that we put in place, to try our best not to kill innocent people, costs a shit load of money. Money we could spend on other things we desperately need. Oh, and studies show that it doesn’t deter people.
The only thing it really does is satiate our amygdala’s ancient bias for vengeance. Our biology tells us that it feels right, but the data shows that individuals and societies don’t really benefit from it.
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The distraction is the point. By making the execution look less grotesque, they believe it will make it more palatable to their mouth-breathing constituents. They want the delusion of the condemned drifting off to sleep to slake their bloodlust without their pesky consciences feeling the guilt.
Er…I suspect that part of the point is that their previous method of execution was lethal injection, and there was a pretty well-documented shortage of the drugs for that. They got really expensive. I suspect that’s around the point where someone looked into alternatives and came up with this.
I think you’re probably right that the method seeming maybe more humane to some critics was part of the appeal of this particular method, but I think the main goal was probably cost reduction and ensuring that supply chain issues couldn’t interrupt their murdering any more.
The mouth-breathers would rather have public torture killings.
You see the same thing when carnists try to justify killing animals for food when they don’t need to.
Of all the hot takes I’ve ever read, this is certainly among them. But like, on the cooler end.
isn’t a cool/cold take one that’s obvious or commonly believed?
Yeah it’s obvious that carnism is inexcusable and that “humane slaughter” is a smokescreen.
Because it distracts from the act itself.
“Nevermind the govt is literally a death panel for the poor and middle class only, just worry about HOW we kill you, k?”
Why obsess over the difference between prolonged suffering or painless death?
If it’s pure nitrogen it’s as painless as it can get. Make sure there is no O2 in there, get rid of exhaled CO2. Simple. But still, your country should think about death sentences in general. If you think nitrogen is too inhumane just shoot them im the head with a shotgun from a close distance, that too should do the trick.
As long as we continue to do this, we should be forced to pull “execution duty” like we can pull jury duty.
Make people come in to press the button that kills the person.
Let’s see how people vote concerning capital punishment after that.
I’d rather pay a professional sociopath a fraction of the cost it would take to jail the inmate for life, to push that button.
Maybe I’m misinterpreting but you don’t seem to have any concern for mistakes in the justice system that incorrectly convict people and subsequently kill them.
Do I have that right?
No I do have that concern too.
I simultaneously also think reprehensible criminals that have been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt should still be executed.
?
As if before now we didn’t think we were killing people we’d proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?
I doubt the courts actually did that in the majority of those cases. There could be something said about the criteria used for who’s eligible for execution.
For example some good candidates would be any number of mass shooters still alive in max security prison. These people have dozens of witnesses and security cam footage, and are beyond a reasonable doubt guilty and should be offed.