If Kenneth Eugene Smith is brought to the Alabama death chamber to face execution next week for his role in the 1988 murder-for-hire of a pastor’s wife, the state plans to use an untested and untried method to end his life, suffocating him with a stream of nitrogen gas to be delivered through a face mask.
In a federal appeals court Friday, Smith’s lawyers sought to block it, arguing that not only have Smith’s constitutional rights been violated, but that he could be subjected to an agonizing death and that most of the details surrounding the state’s new execution protocol “deserve more scrutiny.”
The use of nitrogen gas will be a capital punishment first, even though it has not only been denounced by some medical professionals but also by veterinarians who oppose its use on animals. In 2020, the American Veterinary Medical Association advised against the use of nitrogen gas as a way to euthanize most mammals, calling it “distressing.” One of the few uses of nitrogen gas in animal euthanasia is with chickens.
The United Nations’ Office of The High Commissioner for Human Rights has expressed alarm, saying in a statement that the untested method “could amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment under international human rights law.”
Simply chop his head with a guillotine. Almost zero percent chance of fucking up, quick and painless. No, that one story about the slapped head is bunkum. Standing up suddenly can cause you to faint due to low blood pressure. Having your neck cut off results in a much more sudden drop in blood pressure to the brain. People just don’t want to see the messy blood spilled. If you want to execute someone, deal with it.
Execution methods have weird requirements to be efficient, but also not look violent for those watching. They also get bonus points for looking high tech.
So strapped to a table then a bolt gun attached to the back of the table separates the spinal cord from the brain fits the bill. It doesn’t look violent, no one would even see the bolt go in and out. It is fast, it is reusable and it could even use renewable energy if it is powered by solar panels.
This is exactly why we should be hitting people with a beam that makes them glow and then disappear.
Yeah? Bet he can’t burp his ABCs!
I’d be in favor of some kind of head ripping off machine myself.
Daily reminder that execution costs taxpayers more than life in prison.
This was surprising to me, but a quick search tells me it’s because the cases need more people and often don’t end up by capital punishment anyway, thus ‘wasting’ a lot of resources.
Welp. Here’s hard undeniable proof that CBSnews is absolutely worthless. They’re lying and putting together as many bad adjectives together as they can to make the most humane possible execution method sound absolutely terrible. This is literally the way I want to die. It’s simply hypoxia without the CO2 spike that makes you feel like you’re suffocating. You get a good buzz this way. FFS, I literally hyperventilate and then hold my breath while jerking it for this effect!
Fuck CBS and all the people trying to make this look bad. The only bad about it is that we’re still killing people with a legal system that convicts innocents like me.
I literally hyperventilate and then hold my breath while jerking it for this effect!
Shit, thanks for letting us know I guess.
We can have a solid, productive argument about the way that they death penalty is applied, and how it’s more likely to be used in racist and classist ways. (My stance is that some people need to be completely removed from the possibility of being returned to society; the overwhelming majority of the people that fall into that extreme risk category are white, and almost always have famous pseudonyms, like Co-Ed Killer, Night Stalker, Zodiac, Green River Killer, Father John Geoghan, and so on.)
You can’t argue in good faith that nitrogen is anything other than a very soft way to die.
100 percent with you on Nitrogen being a very soft form of execution. If I was forced to choose how I would be killed and could choose any method possible, I would pick the Nitrogen unquestionably.
There’s a pretty fail-safe way to avoid this happening.
Don’t have the death penalty? Agreed.
The top cringe is that government mandated murder still exist in this century.
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The funny thing is short of overdosing on ketamine and morphine, I always thought nitrogen gas would be my preferred choice to go as it sidesteps the hypercapnia that leads to the urge to need to breathe.
That being said, they could always build a pressure chamber to simulate even a fraction of the pressure differential the titan submersible went through and that is proven to be painless and faster than the point the brain can process.
Or, you know, just not use the death penalty.
I think the most humane method would probably be the combo you highlighted. So like morphine and ketamine and then nitrous to ensure that once the individual enters shallow breathing the nitrous would complete the objective. I can’t imagine there is a more relaxing and stress free way to die than that.
Of course, the revenge driven justice system is not looking for the most humane way to kill someone. The cruelty is the point.
Except that is exactly why they are wanting to do nitrogen asphyxiation.
They aren’t doing it willingly. The drug manufacturers are no longer supplying the cocktails for lethal injections and the medical field is refusing to take part in the act.
Yes, so they chose an alternative that is meant to be as painless as the old method.
They chose a mechanical non- biological method that could proceed without the medical community, again this isn’t out of benevolence, they were forced to act less cruelly because their hands were forced by the medical community.
And the old method was often misadministered so it was often as painful as they could make it. Link I have no doubt someone will find a way to make suffocation painful. Even if the method on the books is painless. The cruelty is/ was/ and always has been the point.
You do love straw men.
No, if they wanted to be cruel, they could bring back hanging, the firing squad, or the electric chair. This is better than those.
You are making accusations with zero proof.
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How about not having government sanctioned murder on the table at all.
You killed someone. So you must be punished by being killed.
So dumb!
LOL no. We Americans want retribution and death without messy stuff like blood. Ya know, like Hollywood?
For my tastes? Shoot me in the head. But I’d take N2 gas over that.
I forget which state it is but there’s one where you can choose firing squad as your execution.
Utah, but they seldom use it. Last person executed by this method was in 2010, I believe.
Lol I don’t understand this.
We care about our pets I want criminals deserving of death to have a poor final experience.
Yes, maybe. But since nobody deserves death, this point is moot either way.
I disagree. Some people had to die for things to change for the better others have to die because of wrongs they’ve done.