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.
Honestly if I had to choose, it would be nitrogen. The alternatives in Alabama are electrocution and lethal injection, both of which are absolutely horrifying. If I was him I’d be firing my lawyers for trying to get the state to use methods that essentially torture you to death instead of the one that just makes you fall asleep.
Absolutely monstrous that he’s getting the death penalty in the first place though. I hope he isn’t in the 5% or so who turn out to be innocent.
Jesus fucking Christ, I just read about the first attempt. The state of Alabama tortured this man for hours, injected him with who knows what, and now they want to do it again. As far as I’m concerned he served his sentence.
I agree here. I don’t think we should be doing the death penalty but if it has to be done an inert gas is the least bad way.
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.
Doesn’t asphyxiation feel like drowning? Doesn’t sound pleasant to me. Though I guess it beats burning alive?
People panic while normal choking because their blood CO2 is rising and they can’t do anything about it. Being exposed to pure nitrogen doesn’t have that effect, it’s what makes working with nitrogen cannisters so dangerous. If they leak in a confined space and then displace all the normal 21% O2 room air with pure N2 the effect is that workers don’t even notice something is wrong. Instead they just calmly pass out and quickly die. It’s probably the easiest way to go.
Your “I need to breathe” reflex is driven by the presence of CO2, not by the absence of oxygen. A lack of oxygen makes you euphoric, then you get tunnel vision, and then you pass out. This is why it’s dangerous to hyperventilate before free diving - you clear out the CO2 from your blood but don’t really add more oxygen. Instead of coming up for air when you need it, you might just pass out instead.
That’s why I always pay for my dives.
i tried paying for my time at the no free diving site near me, but theres never anyone available. feels like im stealing!
I’m going to say that while everything I’ve read on the matter supports the “it’s one of the more pleasant ways to go” argument, I’d be more interested in reading expert opinions on the matter before coming to a concrete conclusion.
The lawyers on both sides of the case should be consulting with doctors and medical researchers to understand what the experience would consist of, how long it would take, the efficacy, side effects if it fails, etc. This is the information that I think should be the deciding factor for proceeding or not.
I will also say that while oxygen deprivation is quick, it’s not instant. It does take up to a few minutes in some cases before brain death to occur, and something to the order of 30 seconds to a minute for unconsciousness to set in.
My personal opinion based on the information so far, assuming that everything I’ve read is factual, would suggest that of all the execution routes available so far, this one is likely the least awful. I won’t say most humane, as I don’t really believe there is a humane way to approach it. If we do have to use the death penalty though, I think this is the approach I would have the fewest objections to.
I’ve been trained on hazardous atmospheres and confined space entry, and worked with asphyxiant gases as an air separation plant operator/technician. One breath of a hazardous atmosphere will knock a person unconscious because upon inhalation the brain is immediately deprived of oxygen. There are asphyxiation industrial accidents regularly, and it’s often horrible because it usually involves two people. The person who’s initially exposed, and then the person who attempts initial rescue because they don’t understand the hazard.
Death may occur in minutes, but it’s not like drowning or suffocating. Unconsciousness is immediate.
Hmm…interesting. I would have figured it would be more akin mechanically speaking to being suffocated, as those scenarios also deprive the body of oxygen. Maybe the difference is that the action of breathing out and then breathing back in would be expelling any remaining oxygen from the lungs without replacing it with more oxygen?
I am having a hard time following how it renders immediate unconsciousness though, given that one could simply breathe out to empty their lungs and then hold their breath for a short period of time without being rendered unconscious, and in theory that should be comparable. Sounds like I might be missing something key here that likely accounts for the disconnect.
isnt carbon monoxide the silent killer? why dont we use that (if were so insistent on killing humans)
Silent but not untraumatic and painless. Basically inert gases you don’t even realize your not getting oxygen and carbon monoxide is similar but you take it up and it causes many horrible symptoms. For details a combination of these will explain it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asphyxiant_gas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_monoxide_poisoning#Signs_and_symptomsNo. That will burn your lungs like hell. You’ll feel like actually suffocating. Nitrogen is an inert gas, so you won’t even feel it, another one is helium. You’ll pretty much lose consciousness after just a couple breaths and then fade away quietly. It’s very commonly used in suicide bags and there’s modern assisted suicide methods that use it too.
I think death penalties are barbaric and uncivilized, no matter what, but comparatively it’s probably better than almost anything the US used historically.
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.
