Alabama wants to be the 1st state to execute a prisoner by making him breathe only nitrogen
Alabama wants to be the 1st state to execute a prisoner by making him breathe only nitrogen
Alabama is seeking to become the first state to execute a prisoner by making him breathe pure nitrogen
Alabama is seeking to become the first state to execute a prisoner by making him breathe pure nitrogen.
The Alabama attorney general’s office on Friday asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date for death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58. The court filing indicated Alabama plans to put him to death by nitrogen hypoxia, an execution method that is authorized in three states but has never been used.
Nitrogen hypoxia is caused by forcing the inmate to breathe only nitrogen, depriving them of oxygen and causing them to die. Nitrogen makes up 78% of the air inhaled by humans and is harmless when inhaled with oxygen. While proponents of the new method have theorized it would be painless, opponents have likened it to human experimentation.
That's a pretty good way to go, apparently.
But there have been an absolutely breathtaking number of death row cases that have been overturned due to new evidence that had exonerated the condemned.
It seems pretty clear that the state is doing a very crappy job of determining guilt, and therefore shouldn't be handing down such a permanent sentence.
FWIW, nitrogen asphyxiation is one of the methods that's preferred by advocates of assisted suicide. Done correctly--by which I mean in a way that doesn't allow a buildup of CO2 in your bloodstream--it's not only painless but gives you a mild high. The proper way to do it is with something like a BiPAP, where the air that's being piped in is pure nitrogen, and the CO2 is all being removed immediately so you aren't breathing it back in. Without a buildup of CO2 in your bloodstream, your brain doesn't recognize that you're suffocating.
Have you ever breathed in helium from a balloon and gotten lightheaded? It's about like that.
I'm in favor of the death penalty in very, very rare cases--and this is not one where I would support it--and this is one of the surest, least barbaric ways to execute someone.
Folks who are confused by this, your body doesn't detect when you're low on oxygen, only when you have too much carbon dioxide. That's why exhaling while holding your breath helps you hold your breath longer (to an extent). Nitrogen doesn't caused the sensation of suffocating while still depriving you of oxygen.
I disagree with capital punishment but have always wondered about this for stuff like assisted suicide.
Surgical tech here... why not just use Propofol? It's the shit we use to put people to sleep for surgery.
It kicks in FAST - when the anesthesiologist pushes that stuff, it can literally take like 5-10 seconds for the patients to go unconscious.
So... for the death penalty, hit em with the normal dosage to put them to sleep, then once they're confirmed unconscious, push the rest of the bottle... or a liter of gasoline... or chuck em out the window; it doesn't matter, as they'll be 100% unaware of the actual method of death.
Edit - turns out there's a lot of good reasons we don't just use Propofol - see comments below. Thanks for the insight, all!
"Smith was one of two men paid $1,000 each to murder Elizabeth Sennett on behalf of her preacher husband, Charles Sennett Sr., who was in debt and wanted to collect life insurance money."
Hold on, so why is he being executed? He wasn't the one who ordered the murder. It seems like lots of other people request murders but those people aren't sentenced to death.
Ok, but bear with me here, because for real, this is how I want to go, and how I plan to put down my fowl when they get too old to live comfortably, because there’s no stress involved to taint the meat, and I can feel comfortable with myself for giving them a good life with free roam, and a good end.
It’s incredibly humane. You feel nothing and don’t know you are suffocating. If you’ve ever breathed helium, you know what nitrogen feels like - literally nothing. This happened to multiple individuals in space because nitrogen is not flammable, and is why they now use 6% co2 in non-oxygenated spaces.
The body does not care if it has oxygen, that’s hard to test for biologically because oxygen is highly reactive, what it does test for is buildup of co2. As long as you can breathe out the co2, your body knows nothing.
So if they are going to kill other humans, this is the way to go. I don’t agree with doing that non-voluntarily, but if it’s going to happen this is at least humane.
It’s one of the more humane methods of assisted suicide. But also it’s the death penalty so not a good thing
While proponents of the new method have theorized it would be painless, opponents have likened it to human experimentation.
Isn't that how we're doing the death penalty anyway? We're trying to find a "painless" way to kill someone, but is there ever really a painless way to do this? I'd imagine even if I'm sitting in a massage chair with classical music playing it wouldn't matter if I knew that half an hour from now I wouldn't be leaving the room.
And we can't really ask doctors because doctors have taken an oath to "do no harm."
The death penalty is just a punishment no one wants to do (well, okay, I'm sure there are plenty of people that have no problem with it), but we've told ourselves that we have to do it.
Can someone enlighten me why it's so hard to find an execution method?
I mean, tens of thousands of teens manage to execute themselves with the content of an average bathroom. How can it be that hard to find a fitting method?
Especially if there are things like carbon monoxide poisoning which has been used by hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people to accidentally kill themselves without them even noticeing.
And if you want a method that's guaranteed to be painless, put someone's head into a large fires cutter and drop a 10 ton weight onto it from 50 meters height. In an instance, there's noting left that could feel weight.
Or ask Ocean Gate for advice. From what Youtube told me, submersible implosings happen within a few milliseconds and have so much speed and pressure that they effectively vaporize the people inside. Pretty sure that's rather painless.
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Alabama should gas itself honestly.
Serious question. Why don't we just shoot them? I'm pretty sure bullets are cheaper than any chemical we use and it's instantly effective. You can't really mess it up either especially if you built a contraption the make sure the bullet hits the base of the skull.
Or fuck even one of those things they use for cattle. I just don't understand why we seem to choose expensive options when the cheapest solution is right there.
I mean if you gotta use the death penalty, that's probably the best way to do it...
Redneck engineering?