"Alabama has carried out the first execution of a death row inmate in the US using nitrogen gas, an untested procedure which the prisoner’s lawyers had argued amounted to a form of cruel and unusual punishment banned under the US constitution. ...
Alabama claimed that the new nitrogen gas method was 'perhaps the most humane method of execution ever devised.'"
@wdlindsy Did the state get its idea from sci-fi?!?
I’ve read so many sci-fi novels/stories that have nitrogen hypoxia as a painless way to suicide when unretrievably lost in space. The body supposedly recognizes hypoxia by buildup of CO2 in the blood/lungs; as long as you can expel CO2, you never realize you’re suffocating.
Regardless of how well-researched the author’s story is, it’s no basis for doing it for capital punishment.
@millardjk I'm not sure I would credit the folks who thought up this barbaric way of killing someone in Alabama with sufficient literacy to have read a lot of sci-fi novels. It seems to me that they were casting about for an easy solution to the problem they are facing now that the poisons they'll once relied on are less accessible.
But eyewitness statements from reporters present in the death chamber suggested that Smith’s death was anything but humane.
Marty Roney of the Montgomery Advertiser reported that between 7.57pm local time and 8.01pm 'Smith writhed and convulsed on the gurney. He took deep breaths, his body shaking violently with his eyes rolling in the back of his head.'”
The gas Alabama used kills by hypoxia, by suffocating a person to death.
@wdlindsy
This is insane! Anyone who has ever had the wind knocked out of them, or otherwise felt they were unable to breathe in enough oxygen knows that it causes severe panic and anxiety. I knew a patient who was dying of respiratory failure that was given anti-anxiety medications as part of the compassionate hospice care.
This incident meets the criteria of cruel and unusual IMHO.
"If we become a nation that adopts gassing as an acceptable and constitutional way to kill fellow human beings, our collective morality will be irremediably altered. In this regard, the US will lose its right to claim clear moral superiority over Nazi Germany, where six million people — including my great-grandmother — were killed, many of them by gassing, because a group of men decided their identity rendered them subhuman.
"There are mixed views on the death penalty. I can’t, however, see any scope for debate about this gruesome execution. It is an embarrassment to advocates of the death penalty and a disgrace to Alabama."
@wdlindsy that's the first reporting on the "outcome" I've seen. I kind of assumed this would be like use of helium which I've read is what some home euthanasia kits do claiming it is non panic inducing, you just get lightheaded like huffing He from a balloon, pass out, and then die. Apparently not the case here.
Even better they should maybe just not execute people. Period.
I'm other news... There are many drugs that we know kill people and people accidentally overdose on all the time.
@enmodo The accounts of how Smith struggled and fought to breathe are horrifying, because he was being suffocated — the mechanism the gas uses to kill. Studies show that using nitrogen even in tiny doses can be severely panic-inducing, and I can verify that from my last experience being given nitrous oxide by a dentist. I found my heart suddenly pounding out of my chest and when the dentist took my blood pressure, it had skyrocketed to an alarming level. This is so barbaric, what Alabama did.
@enmodo I very much agree: "Even better they should maybe just not execute people. Period." That fervently "pro-life" states like Alabama force us to use terms like "less humane" or "more humane" when we're talking about killing fellow human beings by the power of the state just seems obscene.
@wdlindsy there are just too many people who are happy to shoot first ask questions later or have cops do that. All extra judicial executions in my opinion, so it is no wonder they are happy to endorse State sponsored executions.
To these people turn the other cheek does not exist and "pro-life" means pro their life not all life.
@enmodo I think it can well be argued that the US has a deep strain of barbaric violence woven into its culture, with the violence often targeting those who are to be kept in "their place" and with a special kind of cruel eligion justifying the violence.
@drwho You're exactly right. Democracy is a never-completed experiment in the US, something aspirational that we've belied by our practice for centuries — but still struggle for at the urging of those who are the victims of the unrealized experiment.