2y ago

Alabama inmate asks judge to block first nitrogen gas execution

Attorneys for Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, filed an amended lawsuit challenging the proposed new execution method as a potential violation of the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. They asked a federal judge to issue a preliminary injunction to block the execution from going forward next year.
“There is sparse research on how long a human must be exposed to 100% pure nitrogen to cause death, what happens if a human is exposed to less than 100% pure nitrogen for a prolonged period of time, or on the pain or sensations that a human exposed to nitrogen might experience,” his attorneys wrote in the amended lawsuit filed Monday.
They noted in the filing that the American Veterinary Medical Association wrote in 2020 euthanasia guidelines that nitrogen hypoxia is an acceptable method of euthanasia for pigs but not other mammals because it could create an “anoxic environment that is distressing for some species.”

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Nitrogen asphyxiation has been a favoured method with the euthanasia crowd for a while now. I'm against the death penalty, but it would be one of my top three preferred ways out if I was given the choice.
- Nitrogen asphyxiation has been a favoured method with the euthanasia crowd for a while now. I’m against the death penalty, but it would be one of my top three preferred ways out if I was given the choice.
  What are your other two?
  
  Probably massive dose of heroin, or high explosive. But we all know #1 is snu snu.
  
  Being exploded, your nerves can't act fast enough to notice. A high explosive attached to your head would be painless.
  
  I would like to be told that, "You're free to go, we've decided not to execute you", then spend the next day joyfully celebrating on rides at Disneyland, followed by being shot in the head by a professional hitman without my knowledge. If I have to be executed, at least I can die happy... Shame about spraying my blood over all those kids at Disneyland though.
  
  I don't believe it's ever been a serious proposal, but I'd be ok with the rollercoaster of death
  
  NTA but my top three would be
  hypoxia via inert gas
  firing squad
  hanging
  The humiliation of spending my last few minutes on Earth strapped to a chair while my body is chemically forced to fall asleep and my muscles and heart stop is too dehumanizing and is a punishment in itself to me.
Arguing his way into a more painful death
- Every crack in the death penalty is another step towards abolishing the death penalty.
  
  Agreed, my read of the quotes is that it's saying something like "you can't claim ANY execution method is humane because we don't research how people feel while we are killing them, so just stop."
- For real. There is plenty of research on what death by hypoxia does to the human body. Nitrogen being an inert gas, the sentenced wouldn't feel anything different than breathing (notwithstanding their own anxiety). Lethal injection- muscle paralysis followed by heart failure - is the much more cruel execution method.
  
  I think if the legal injection went exactly as planned, it would be painless. But that gets botched all the time.
- Exactly this. There is a lot of experimental and direct human knowledge of nitrogen asphyxiation.
  The "anoxic environment distressing to some animals" is specific to rodentia or other creatures that have been exposed to anoxic environments in their evolutionary process.
  Must animals use a buildup of waste products to sense a need for fresh air. But in an anoxic environment (like when breathing only nitrogen, or when breathing subterranean gases that have similarly supplanted oxygen), you still breathe out the waste products, so everything seems fine.
  But since rodents live underground on a regular basis and have realistic probabilities of encountering low- or no-oxygen environments, they evolved the ability specifically to detect oxygen - that is, they evolved the ability to realoze there's no oxygen and freak out.
  But for us, it's blissful sleep, possibly preceded by a case of the sillies.
- He’s trying to argue his way out of execution while appeals are being filed.
Smith’s initial conviction and death sentence was overturned on appeal. He was retried and convicted again in 1996, but the jury this time recommended a life sentence by a vote of 11-1. A judge overrode the recommendation and sentenced Smith to death. In 2017, Alabama became the last state to abolish the practice of letting judges override a jury’s sentencing recommendation in death penalty cases, but the change was not retroactive.
The laws changed to where he should be serving a life sentence, but they don’t apply to him because they changed after the bloodthirsty judge decided to kill him.
- Let's eat them compassionately
- I wholeheartedly agree. They should be euthanized quickly and painlessly.
This reminds me, we should put all fossil fuel supportive politicians and company executives in a garage without ventilation and cars running on idle
Bring back firing squads.

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