Sept 22 (Reuters) - The Supreme Court of Alabama is weighing whether to allow the state to become the first to execute a prisoner with a novel method: asphyxiation using nitrogen gas.
Last month, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall asked the court to allow the state to proceed with gassing Kenneth Smith, who was convicted of murder in 1996, using a face mask connected to a cylinder of nitrogen intended to deprive him of oxygen.
Smith’s lawyers have said the untested protocol may violate the U.S. Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishments,” and have argued a second attempt to execute him by any method is unconstitutional.
In a reply brief filed with the court on Friday, they called the nitrogen gas protocol “so heavily redacted that it is unintelligible,” and said Smith had not yet exhausted his appeals.
I’m going to start off this conversation by first saying I’m not an advocate of the death penalty. However, of all the methods used, asphyxiation is not “cruel and unusual.” It is quick (as in immediate) and painless. This is why the defendant’s lawyers have no idea what they’re talking about.
if you crush the person with a giant falling anvil it is quick and painless as well as long as a professional administers the anvil.
This sounds like a joke but this is the explicit problem: doctors won’t be the ones to do it.
You guys all knew that right? Doctors don’t administer those chemicals for lethal injection. And they won’t be administering gas either. Some po’dunk cop will.
Because doctors take an oath that begins “first, do no harm”. This has forever been the problem of the very notion of “humane execution”, there are no physicians involved. None. At any step.
Know what’s just as effective? Bullets. But we can’t call a firing squad humane with a straight face, and the witnesses remaining are traumatized, including the shooters. That truth exposes the truth of the death penalty. It’s not about justice, but retribution - for the living. They’re lynchings. Violent theatrics. That’s the point.
They shouldn’t be legal, it’s barbaric. But you already said you weren’t for them, so I’m just preaching to the ether.
isnt carbon monoxide the silent killer? why dont we use that (if were so insistent on killing humans)
Nitrogen is inert and already makes up 70% of the air you breath. Your body won’t even notice if it’s turned up to 100%.
Your body has no sense of oxygen content of the air. What you sense is CO2 buildup in your blood (because it modifies the pH). In a pure nitrogen environment you can still exhale the CO2, but of course do not replenish any O2. It’s not just that you won’t notice – there is nothing to notice. Your body literally lacks the sensory ability to detect it.
To be distinguished from a pure CO2 environment where you cannot expel the CO2 so you will feel the effect of being unable to breath.
After taking one or two breaths of N2, there will be so little O2 in your lungs that breathing will actually run your respiration backwards – it will pull O2 out of your blood instead of bringing it in.
You’ll likely experience a light euphoria, get a headache, maybe feel a bit dizzy. But this will happen so fast it’s hard to even be certain – unconsciousness in under a minute is expected and within just a few breaths is possible.
