“Kenny just began to gasp for air repeatedly and the execution took about 25 minutes total.”
Pretty compassionate way to kill a person.
Once again, the Law in the south is brutal.
Smith’s death came after the US Supreme Court denied a final, 11th-hour bid to stay of execution. The ruling received dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor who wrote that the state had selected Smith as a “guinea pig” by using the untested method.
I guess they should have killed a random selection of people with nitrogen first, so that it wouldn’t be an “untested” method.
Because it’s ok to use a human as a “guinea pig”.
Gruesome.
I’m not convinced the death penalty is worthwhile except to feed someone’s wrath.
What if, (and hear me out,) we did for corrections the sort of thing that countries with low recidivism do? Like, not use for-profit prisons with incentive to turn out re-offenders, and not use prisons that turn out hardened criminals that aren’t equipped to function in the world without resorting to crime, and actually take the ‘corrections’ or ‘rehabilitation’ parts of their nomenclature seriously?
If all we do with our prisons is punish and humiliate (and squeeze slave labor out of) convicts, we’re just creating future crime and all that’s left at that point is killing convicts at industrial pace unless you can figure out that crime is more driven by poverty than anything else, and the USA just doesn’t want to figure that out because it just doesn’t want to solve poverty or crime, it wants to make money creating and punishing both.
There are many accounts of workers accidentally entering confined spaces that have been purged with nitrogen and they were all unconscious in seconds. (OSHA records). If it took the prison 22 MINUTES to execute this guy, then they totally botched that execution.
Anyone still want to use the cool nitrogen based suicide pods from Austria?
Come on, isn’t this america? Why don’t they just shoot prisoners?! It’s quick, cheap and they love shooting, don’t they? Coming up with so many twisted ways to kill a person just to do it differently than the Nazis. If even Belarus is still officially shooting their people, why isn"t the greatest country in the world?
/s because I can’t handle thisI’m curious how they implemented this. The air completely has to be replaced with nitrogen, no breathing in a mix of nitrogen and outside air, no oxygen at all. People that enter confined spaces with no oxygen pretty much just drop and are dead quickly, so this doesn’t sound like they did it right.
They used a mask rather than the more appropriate method which would be to use a sealed chamber that was forcefully evacuated of oxygen and replaced by nitrogen the way the suicide pods are supposed to function.
The problem with a mask is it can’t be a perfectly sealed system. The issue with the execution from a logistical standpoint was the redneck engineering they employed and not the actual science behind nitrogen hypoxia.
Please don’t come at me, I’m not making a value judgment about the use of the death penalty, I’m just explaining the issue with their shoddy ass methodology.
Edit: accidentally a word.
Edit #2 (YouTube Link): Here is some additional information about why a gas mask is an ineffective and dangerous way to conduct an execution via nitrogen hypoxia from Dr. Philip Nitschke, a leading advocate of the right to die movement and an expert in the field of voluntary euthanasia. He personally examined the execution method being used in Alabama, and told them he felt it would be ineffective for many of the same reasons stated above.
You shouldn’t really need a seal if you have positive pressure. Agree that this was half-assed, though
He could have held his breath in a chamber too. The problem is it being forced on someone instead of being voluntary or unnoticed.
He held his breath for 22min? No they fucked up the procedure. Even if he had held his breath at first he should have been unconsious the first time he took one. I’ve nearly been knocked out by nitrogen hypoxia before. It takes one lungfull of non oxygenated air to make you start to black out. He must have still been getting some oxygen somehow. It sounds like they were trying to use a mask (which is a dumb way to do it) so they probably didn’t use a high enough flow rate for the nitrogen and he was breathing in air from around the mask. They probably would have been better off forgetting about the mask entirely and just blowing nitrogen at his face at a much higher flow rate (that’s what almost did it for me).
Make the switch from regular air to nitrogen at a random point and he’ll be dead before he realizes it.
FTR I’m generally against the death penalty, so same, don’t give me grief. I’m of the opinion that if it’s gonna be done, don’t fuck it up.
Ok. So regarding the implementation it sounds like they fucked it up. As you said (and I previously implied) it sounds like they didn’t properly exclude oxygen/remove waste CO2. Kinda hard to believe they fucked up something so simple considering the ton of evidence on hypoxic accidents.
I’m willing to bet my left testicle they thought in their lead-addled brain that it would work like a diver’s mask. Pumping in gas pushes out the water, so it must also push out the air, I tell you hwat! I don’t consider myself to be a very bright person, but even I know that water and air work differently.
Precisely. They apparently either felt it was fine to cut corners, do not fully understand how nitrogen hypoxia actually works, or a little bit of suffering was intentionally part of the process because it still is Alabama after all…
Was gonna say, in Alabama you could give them a step by step guide and they’d take shortcuts.
You’re assuming they could read the steps in the first place. That guide better include pictures!
little bit of suffering was intentionally part of the process
Of course it was. They also didn’t want to use nitrogen, as there is no awareness at all if done correctly. The drugs they use with lethal injection likely induce panic and pain because they do not induce unconsciousness before it.
Executions have never been intended to be humane. They are punishment, vindication for the wronged. A childish obsession with a horrible misunderstanding of justice.
The exit bag uses nitrogen suffocation as a suicide method. It’s a bag that encloses the person’s head. If they felt a mask could have been used, they would have
The big, really big issue, and I hate to say it. Is that, depending on the jurisdiction and laws in place, executions cannot be done by professionals. Most of the people who would know how to do it properly, medics, nurses, engineers, are ethically banned from participating or facilitating executions. Not that this stops them all from participating, and in some contexts some do, but on the general, executions on the USA are performed by completely incompetent individuals.
The more reason to just not fucking do them in the first place. How did they botched it using a mask when almost every single expert on medically assisted death recommends at least a sealed hood.
The people with the most experience with nitrogen suffocation are scientists working with animals. It’s the current best ethical euthanasia method.
Very good point.
Hot take, they don’t care because they are killing someone. The humanity part of it is completely removed. They care that they did the deed and it didn’t work. It should have been immediate. Someone should be losing their job. An Internet search could have prevented this.
Surely they ought to care simply because if they continue to fuck it up they will lose public support for executions?
Well you and I would think that is obvious. I am not so sure what they are thinking.
Plus it’s Alabama. The cruelty has always been the point for as long as they have been a state
their shotty ass methodology.
In case you didn’t know, that should be “shoddy” as in “made or done poorly”
Yes, that is what I was going for, thank you. I have now corrected my shoddy spelling 🙃😉
Also the guillotine is right there… it’s not pretty but the only method that “just works”.
I think the bigger issue is that he was aware of when the nitrogen started, so tried holding his breath for as long as possible.
If he had the mask on and it was pumping breathable air, and then at some point switched to pure nitrogen without any warning that would be more humane because he wouldn’t know what was happening or when.
Lol at calling any of that humane. There’s nothing humane about suffocating a man against his will.
It sounds like your real issue is with the act of executing criminals rather than the method used.
Which is fine, but it’s a different discussion.
Why not use like a scuba mask with a tank of nitrogen instead of oxygen? Scuba masks are seemingly airtight.
Or even a collar with a helmet like an astronaut suit. A lot easier to evacuate oxygen from a suit than an entire room.
They often don’t. There are moderate risks with lethal injections, and even if you seem unconscious, it’s still disputed whether you would really be unaware or not. As for the gas, suffocate in any manner is very painful and unpleasant.
Your suffocation reflex is driven by a buildup of carbon dioxide, not a lack of oxygen.
If you leave air composition the same but remove the oxygen, your body doesn’t notice and you feel fine until you suddenly black out.
https://youtu.be/UN3W4d-5RPo?si=3LKw5fe1wXfRDcrB
The Air Force does training on it, since it can happen if the aircraft loses pressure and pilots need to know how to notice and handle it. As you can see in the above video, the pilot is not suffering even though the oxygen level has been cut quite drastically.
If you hold your breath you still build up CO2. You know, as a reaction to being killed.
So don’t announce “alright, now!” to the victim. Wait until they’re breathing normally and then silently switch over to nitrogen, he’ll be unconscious before he realizes it.
And after a couple minutes at most you will reflexively take a breath or pass out and start breathing. In an inert atmosphere that first breath will knock you out almost immediately. After that you won’t feel anything. After the individual is unconsious you just need to keep them in an inert gas for a few more minutes for them to actually die.
“Kenny just began to gasp for air repeatedly and the execution took about 25 minutes total.”
Even with a portion of that being ‘just to make sure’ his vital signs had stopped, it was certainly longer than a couple of minutes.
Because clearly they fucked something up. He was still getting oxygen somehow. I’m guessing they didn’t have the nitrogen flow high enough so he was still getting some oxygen.
It could have also just been agonal gasping which can last over an hour even after the person is already dead. It’s fairly common for people to see that and say the person is still breathing even though that person has already been dead for a while. It also happens with heart attacks and it frequently leads to ems having to explain to family members why there is no hope of resuscitation even though to them it looks like the person is still “breathing”.
That’s the crux of the whole “this was done very, very wrong” thing people have been saying.
You are not being “suffocated” in the sense that you aren’t allowed to breathe. I suggest you do some looking around and check out events where people have entered spaces that can have no/limited oxygen such as mines or anchor chain lockers on ships. They often simply drop unconscious and are dead fairly quickly. The victim isn’t re-breathing CO2, which is what gives us that panicked lack of air feeling, or someone holding something over your face making it difficult to breathe.
If you’ve ever had a medical procedure that puts you under, I can assure you there’s nothing remembered to be aware of.
Just like with anesthesia, all of the examples of people losing consciousness peacefully were either doing it voluntarily or unknowingly.
As someone well versed in inhaling Nitrous Oxide, why not not just use Nitrous Oxide? That’d be a quick way out, and it’s cheap, you can buy enough to kill a person on Amazon for like $30. Even if you fuck it up, they’re unconscious and feeling nothing.
The liquid? It would be excruciating. Burning your insides with frostbite.
You’re thinking of liquid nitrogen. Nitrous oxide is commonly found in whip cream cannisters, and is actually quite pleasurable imo.
Drowning in whip cream? You could probably just eat your way out.
agustus gloop soundin’ ass
Same reason they don’t just OD them on morphine: those are enjoyable drugs, and we can’t be giving our death row inmates that.
There’s functionally no difference. The way that they messed this up would have still created suffering because they weren’t letting carbon dioxide escape.
The suffocation feeling comes from CO2 buildup, not lack of oxygen. The same issue can happen with nitrous oxide if you don’t let the CO2 escape.
Also, and keep in mind I have never killed myself using this method, so I don’t know first hand, but, nitrogen is lighter than carbon dioxide, so if the person had 100% pure nitrogen to breathe, and no carbon dioxide, and is maintained with their head near the top of the pod, they would have died fast and allegedly without feeling it.
However, I am absolutely convinced that the people responsible for this execution did research on how to make this method as painful as possible (done right, it is apparently euphoric, and there is NO WAY they would even remotely take the risk of this happening), so they probably went out of their way to have a nitrogen-oxygen mix (like our atmosphere), but with lower amounts of oxygen, and forced the person to stay in a position that would guarantee they would die from CO2 asphyxiation rather than nitrogen.
It is even more inhumane than just using CO2 (as is done in meat “production”), because it prolongs the suffering quite a lot… The whole point of using CO2 on animals is to expedite the process… at the expense of their suffering.
CO2 is also cheap and safer for human workers.
Nitrogen is undetectable with human senses, whereas you’ll instantly know if you enter an area with a high CO2 concentration. CO2 is also heavier than air, so it tends to stay in the “pit” they lower the animals into.
So their problem was they didn’t vent his exhalation? And only let him breath in pure nitrogen?
I’m going to take a wild guess here and say no one knows. The folks who put the mask on the dude are probably not any sort of experts in masks, gas, or not being an ass, and everyone in this thread is speculating.
Stop executions.
Iran’s hanging people in public, America gasses them with private viewing.
For your consideration.
He was unconscious and not experiencing any form of pain that he was aware of. Therefore his death was PAINLESS.
You have absolutely no evidence that this is true, you’re just parroting after-the-fact propaganda while entirely ignoring the good science on offer in this thread.
Those boots must be real tasty, huh?
Ignoring science? Nope. If They implemented it correctly there would have not even been a struggle nor a groan as the oxygen would have been replaced by nitrogen in the blood and death would have been without a whimper. As it was even without the correct implementation since it seems the nitrogen was mixed with some oxygen or unconsciousness would have been within seconds, he was aware of no pain at the time of death as he was unconscious. Unless you are trying to claim that he was supernaturally aware of pain through some other means than his consciousness.
“If”
That is the science in this thread, if you could be arsed to read and comprehend it. But you’d rather waste your time with nonsense so whatever.
Right, but they clearly didn’t as they suffocated over 20+ minutes.
I’m not sure what your point is.
Which boots?
The bootlickers are the ones supporting the death penalty without the lack of suffering.
Seriously whose boots are getting locked here?
I think their point is you’re buying a version of events that very much goes against reality as they slowly suffocated for 20+ minutes.
A little bit different than bootlicking don’t you think?
Bootlicking is giving in to authority without question.
No one here has any authority
Therefore his death was PAINLESS.
Except for the 22 minutes of struggling to breath. Unless you’re discounting those by saying he was unconscious the moments before his death. If that’s the case, most forms of what we consider painful death are after at least a few moments of unconsciousness.
Read the article:
"We didn’t see somebody go unconscious in 30 seconds,” said Red Hood. “What we saw was minutes of someone struggling for their life.”
The simplest explanation for what went wrong here is that Kenny’s religious advisor is lying and we need to ask a neutral observer what actually happened.
No, the simplest explanation is that Alabama is filed with fucktards who didn’t research the correct way to perform this task. They used a mask instead of a hood. Also, this same guy (and another guy last year) SURVIVED lethal injection in Alabama because they fucked it up. It took Alabama 5 hours to try killing him with lethal injection last year, and they STILL failed. What makes you think Alabama started a first of its kind process in the US and used it successfully?
I think you’re putting too much emphasis on the geography here, this is just the nature of execution in America, it’s what happens when medical personnel aren’t involved, you end up with a flawed system, which it always has been. There were botched hangings there were botched electrocutions, there have been botched lethal injections all over the country, this is more an issue with capital punishment than it is location.
That’s actually a much more complicated explanation.
Wait, you think a religious advisor lying is more likely than people who were incompetent three times last year on a well established procedure being incompetent on a brand new procedure?
Yes, that’s why I said that we need a report from someone with no skin in the game.
But I pretty much assume that religious advisors are always lying.
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Certainly not an unbiased observer.
https://www.treadbylee.com/p/never-alone-the-suffocation-of-kenneth
Pro Life!
“Pro-life” is just the label they put on it to seem pious. It’s not pro-life. It’s anti-women. With conservatives the suffering is the point.
Use a bolt gun. It is good enough for the cows and pigs it is fast, it probably hurts but likely less time than even a needle.
I suggest starting by testing it out on the person that though slow suffocation for 25 minutes was humane.
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I feel like I have heard someone say it tastes better that way. I’m sure that would make it justifiable.
another good one. Not quite as theatrical as a canon execution, but a funny idea nonetheless.
Sorry. I can’t emphasize with criminals. It’s impossible for me. The only thing that is weird to me is why on earth you took almost 40 years to execute a prisoner? It doesn’t make sense. And other thing. I hope all the 4 criminals get the same punishment as well. It looks like the idiot paid the most.
“Pastor Charles Sennett Sr. hired Billy Gray Williams, one of his tenants, to murder his wife, 45-year-old Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett.[6] To carry out the plan, Williams hired Kenneth Smith and John Forrest Parker to assist him.[6] Sennett was going to pay each of the men $1,000 for the murder.[6] On March 18, 1988, Elizabeth Sennett was found with fatal injuries in her home in Colbert County, Alabama.[6]”
Oh and other thing for all the softy snowflakes. Let’s hope your mom, sister, granny, father, brother, never get killed. It’s way too easy to talk from your comfortable positions.
From another report:
“It appeared that Smith was holding his breath as long as he could,” Hamm ( Alabama’s corrections commissioner) said at the press conference.
Well, that would certainly make things worse for the prisoner and the witnesses.
If that’s the case, then he wasn’t going to be unconscious in seconds, as it would be expected by breathing the gas.
Instead, he inadvertently caused himself a lot of unnecessary suffering.
That’s okay next time we’ll just run a tube down his throat! That’s not cruel at all!
Or maybe we put them in a room and fill it with the nitrogen gas. Some kind of… Chamber.
We do it for pigs! Except we use CO2, because it’s cheap and apparently we don’t give a fuck about pigs.
I’m a rancher and meat lover and still the fact that the slaughterhouse industry chooses to gas animals with CO2 disgusts me. On my farm we dispatch with a rifle shot to the brain, the animal is dead immediately.
Honestly that’s the choice I would take if I had to be executed. Though nitrogen gas is fine too, I used to do confined space work and have seen many examples about how you don’t even know that you’re dead.
No no, too cruel. That would risk them hurting themselves when they fall over. We must strap them tightly in place upside down for security purposes, and then put a tube down (up?) their throat. And if we accidently put it down their food hole
then that’s just a bonusthen it was probably their fault for struggling.For the record, fuck the death penalty.
It’s not really about the nitrogen. Earth’s atmosphere is 78% nitrogen already. It’s the absence of oxygen that’s fatal. Our bodies don’t sense a lack of oxygen, just a surplus of CO2. The idea is to remove all the oxygen and the CO2. It’s a slow suffocating process but, in theory, the subject would only experience falling asleep. Of course that assumes it’s done properly and the subject isn’t panicking, neither of which seem likely.
I think a mask, which I assume they used, is far better in this context. Just like being at the dentist.
But in medically assisted suicide, an injection is used (sometimes drugs that a patient can take themselves), and it is by far the most respectful, humane way to do it.
If a prisoner is going to hold their breath and make it worse than it needs to be, you can’t fault the method.
That said, the situation was still horrible from what’s been described.
If a natural human response messes up your execution, you should absolutely blame the method.
Do you try to hold your breath when you get gas at the dentist? It would be aweful.
You can’t control how some people are going to act.
Some faint when they see a needle, some vomiting when they are electrocuted. Some soil themselves before a hanging or firing squad.
I’m not saying I support execution or the method, but it’s obvious that this could have gone much smoother had the prisoner not try to intentionally hold their breath.
It quite literally should have been very relaxing, quick, and as respectful as you can expect for an execution.
Right, they were trying to not die. That is what everybody will do in this scenario. That’s the kind of thing that happens when you murder somebody, the victim is generally opposed to your plan, and so they typically do not do as you wish. An execution that plans to have the victim of it go along with the plan is simply idiotic.
If execution is the punishment, there really won’t be a perfect way to do it, not without the prisoner’s cooperation.
Really, this would have been a much better way to go than electrocution, which is traumatizing for everyone involved.
Keep in mind, this guy survived lethal injection, so maybe he was simply trying to cheat death a second time.
If the person we’re killing struggles then it’s not our fault? Really? Did my sarcasm make you think I actually supported this bullshit?
If the person we’re killing struggles then it’s not our fault? Really?
I’m saying that in this specific case, if he was holding his breath, then it caused considerably more suffering than it needed to.
I’m offering an explanation as to why witnesses saw him struggle so much, not saying that one way is better than another… to execute someone is going to be horrible no matter how it happens.
It didn’t have to be at all though. We don’t have to keep doing this.
I don’t disagree.
