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.
I’m definitely against the death penalty but if they’re gonna do it anyway this seems like one of the better options
theres actually a thing called nitrogen narcosis. while i still find states that use the death penalty abhorrent, its one of the nicer ways to go. while breathing a pure oxygen-defficient gas you also dont have a feeling that you are suffocating since you can breathe off carbon dioxide just fine. thats why exit bags are a thing in the first place
You can’t breathe carbon dioxide like you can breathe oxygen. Nitrogen works well because it’s soluble in the body and will replace oxygen, meaning aside from the mental effects, you don’t notice it.
CO2 doesn’t work the same, though. It won’t replace oxygen and will produce a feeling of suffocation.
That’s what he’s saying. You can exhale the CO2 and breathe in the nitrogen.
CO2 is what causes the burning sensation in the lungs when you hold your breath too long.
Not entirely true. CO2 won’t reabsorb but the inability to get rid of what’s already there will cause it to build up. It’s the presence of excess CO2 that causes the body’s suffocation response. This is why people sleep right through being suffocated by CO and why they theorize that nitrogen will have the same response
Content warning >!linking to a method of suicide!<
for diving it is quite different though.
Nitrogen high starts (with normal pressurized air) at around 40m depths which means 5bar pressure or roughly 4bar partial pressure for the nitrogen. It then starts getting into your synapses partly blocking them.
even with 100% pure nitrogen at normal pressure you just get 1bar. So you wont get high from it.
Not going out on a morphine high?
Right? Like why can’t the lethal injection be an overdose of fentanyl or carfentanyl? It’d be cheap and easy. I’m not advocating for the death penalty, just wondering why it isn’t that way.
Because the cretins that believe in the death penalty, and they are cretins if they believe in the death penalty, want the process to be as horrific as it can be while not shattering the illusion (for them) that it isn’t barbaric. They don’t want it to be quick and they definitely don’t want it to be painless.
They don’t want it to be quick and they definitely don’t want it to be painless.
Then why are they pumping people full of phenobarbital? From what I understand, that isn’t a particularly unpleasant way to die.
AFAIK the execution protocols that use phenobarbitol also use other chemicals to actually cause fatality, which are reportedly very nasty to experience. They also use butt plugs. This is to reduce discomfort for the witnesses. As I said, the illusion of a civilised procedure is important for them.
the illusion of a civilized procedure
https://youtu.be/eirR4FHY2YY?si=EUtz57QxdB_QouXa
Jacob Geller is one of my favorite YouTubers, and he did a really insightful video about how the purpose of the death penalty has changed. It used to be pretty clearly about showing the public that if they fuck up they’ll be snatched up and killed horrifically. He supports this with both the innumerable variations people have come up with for the fairly simple task of killing someone else, and how both the execution itself and the body of the condemned were prominent in the public eye (think gibbets and things like that). He argues that now the death penalty is in this weird sort of limbo where it’s considered distasteful to make a gleeful spectacle of it but that proponents still think that the specter of being snatched up by the state and killed is important for maintaining a peaceful society so you have all these half measures and stutter steps that are ostensibly designed to be humane for the prisoner but are really there for the comfort and moral superiority of the audience. As an example he talks about the paralytic agent in the lethal injection cocktail that does nothing to relieve pain but prevents the condemned from visibly reacting to that pain. Knowingly or unknowingly, the death penalty is walking this weird line where everyone involved is allowed to pretend that they don’t want to do it but that they’re bound just as much as the condemned, there are still artifacts of the performative death penalty from days of yore left over in our processes and procedures for killing a condemned person but that proponents have recently made it soft, comfortable and hidden precisely because they recognize that continuing in the old ways will end with the abolition of the death penalty. We’ve changed as a society from “let’s pop on down to the town square after dinner to watch the hanging” to “let’s get this nasty business over with behind closed doors so as not to make people uncomfortable”.
Botched executions occur when there is a breakdown in, or departure from, the “protocol” for a particular method of execution. … Botched executions are “those involving unanticipated problems or delays that caused, at least arguably, unnecessary agony for the prisoner or that reflect gross incompetence of the executioner.”
That definition is rather broad. If you use that definition, I think the guy they are talking about executing has already been the victim of one botched execution.
Alabama attempted to execute Smith by lethal injection last year, but called off the execution because of problems inserting an IV into his veins.
If I am to be executed, I want a firing squad, a lit cigarette, and I don’t want anything crammed in my ass.
I don’t see how anyone could possibly imagine that electricity could be a civilized way to kill someone.
October 16, 1985. Indiana. William E. Vandiver. Electrocution. After the first administration of 2,300 volts, Vandiver was still breathing. The execution eventually took 17 minutes and five jolts of electricity.[8] Vandiver’s attorney, Herbert Shaps, witnessed the execution and observed smoke and the smell of burning. He called the execution “outrageous.” The Department of Corrections admitted the execution “did not go according to plan.”[9]
Reminds me of The Green Mile, when Percy “forgets” to wet the sponge…
Biggest reason is probably that it will be a lot easier to administer. Injection when you can’t used a medical profession is kind of a pain for everyone involved.
I mean if you gotta use the death penalty, that’s probably the best way to do it…
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.
People can survive gunshots (even momentarily), it’s messy, and it looks scary. Honestly nitrogen hypoxia is not the worst way to go, I’d choose it over getting my brain blasted. Ideally we wouldn’t do it at all.
It’s hard for the people doing the execution. That’s why the traditional firing squad gives some of the shooters blanks: so they can convince themselves they’re not the killer.
Pulling a lever in another room for a method that looks calm and painless is a lot easier for the killers.
Nitrogen is pretty cheap, and would be considered way more human. Bullets aren’t an instant death, the cattle thing would be but considered brutal. Both a firing squad and cattle thing would be considered cruel and unusual punishment, the SCOTUS has already said firing squads are cruel and unusual. The classic three drug cocktail was painless but no one will.make it.
Nitrogen makes you feel.like.your drunk, nitrogen narcosis, until you pass out. It is considered painless.
But the real question you should be asking is, why do we even still allow the death penalty. Innocent people have been put to death. Or at least enough doubt that they shouldn’t have been killed.
Bullets are as instant death as it gets. For a couple bucks you can headshot someone with a 50 cal, you can vaporize the brain way before neurons can propagate… Literally impossible to feel pain physically
Humane isn’t about the victim though, it’s about the observers. Nitrogen is painless and it’s not until the last moments the victim even notices, but in those last months there might be panic
If you disagree with my point, ask yourself… Heroin or fentanyl OD is probably about the cheapest and most pleasant death, why has it never even been considered?
The 3 drug cocktail worked, but it was often a minimally-trained technician charged with placing the actual IV lines. I know most of us have had an IV sometime in our life with relatively little pain, but that seems not to be the case for some inmates. Anxiety, old age, obesity, dehydration, and myriad other reasons can make it more challenging to place a catheter.
But revenge is more important then justice. /s
People always think of the innocent person who got off. I get that. But what do you do with somebody who has, say, shot lots of kids in a school?
Rehab? In what world could we let that person back into society?
If it were your kid in that chair, you wouldn’t give a shit what they’d done, you’d fight with your last breath to save them anyway.
Who you are doesn’t matter.
Who they are doesn’t matter.
Fight to save them.
If it were my 12 year old they killed I would be taking a different view…
Is there some reason a prison is incapable of containing them until they die? The only two choices aren’t kill them or let them rejoin society.
I didn’t mean to imply that - but I don’t see how lifetime imprisonment is any more humane. In fact others arguing against the death penalty are saying it’s worse which… Is confusing.
because a huge percentage of convicted are later exonerated, and a large percentage that aren’t are posthumously exonerated.
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I’m talking about where there is zero doubt the crime was committed.
School shootings and the like.
You can’t have it both ways. I only execute the absolutely guilty and never put someone in jail who is innocent. The world is not black and white. It’s not as simple as you make it out. Innocent people who ere put to death by the criminal.justoce system, at the time we’re beyond a doubt guilty.
I’m posting a hypothetical.
Every prosecution team will tell you there is zero doubt until the exoneration, at which point they’ll say “hmm.”
Also, you say “zero doubt in school shootings” but unlike folk-wisdom, the law actually does care about the minutae of culpability and is exactly the place to get into the distinctions between aforethought, meditation and whether or not they were responsible for their actions.
We can know they did it regardless of culpability.
Let’s hypothesize a perfect legal system for sake of argument.
Never said let them back into society. Knowing you will die in a 6x6 cell, alone, and unwanted by anyone in the whole world is far worse punishment then anything else I can imagine. But killing anyone, regardless of crime, or evidence, makes you just as much of a murderer as anyone convicted of that crime. Also, there is the possibility of killing someone completely innocent, what then? Oops our bad, but we killed 30 other bad people, so this one isn’t a big deal?
Many people would prefer to be executed vs. being tortured for 50 years in a cell. Others wouldn’t, though. Is it worse to imprison someone innocent for decades or mistakenly execute them? I’m not sure. People could take their choice, perhaps? That’s pretty cruel too though.
Knowing you will die in a 6x6 cell, alone, and unwanted by anyone in the whole world is far worse
So… Revenge then?
I would rather be shot than nitrogen then because I want to die sober.
Bullets aren’t an instant death, the cattle thing would be but considered brutal.
Bullets and the cattle thing are both instant when they are fired at the right part of the brain. Why is more brutal and less humane? If it kills them immediately, then it’s as humane as killing someone gets.
Firing squads didn’t shoot you in the head.
I didn’t say they should use a firing squad. I said they could shoot you in the part of the brain with a bullet that will kill you instantly.
And it is illegal per cruel and unusual punishment clause.of the Constitution
Why is it cruel and unusual to kill someone instantly with a bullet and not cruel and unusual to electrocute or hang someone?
It’s not actually written in the constitution that killing someone instantly with a bullet is a cruel and unusual punishment. It’s an interpretation of the constitution that is frankly bizarre considering the ways we do actually execute people.
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Have you ever been narc’d? My dive buddy was once, he took his regulator out of his mouth and tried giving it to fish. Never felt a thing from it other than “oh shit, trying to make a fish breath air”.
They want to look painless and bloodless.
I am against the death penalty. Its only purpose is vengeance.
I’m torn on it honestly.
On one hand I don’t want innocent people killed by it but on the other I believe certain people don’t deserve to keep living after their crimes.
But I’ll never understand how “humane” just means “doesn’t leave a mess”
If it’s faster and cheaper it should be implemented.
You’re correct to identify that your position is inconsistent - (A) not wanting the innocent to be wrongly executed and (B) wanting the option to enact retributive punishment against certain offenders.
Let’s analyze these two imperatives:
The benefits of (A) are quite self evident. It’s bad to execute people for no reason. It’s maybe the most brutal and terrifying thing the state can do to a person. And where there exists capital punishment, it happens with non-zero probability.
The benefits of (B) are that you get a nice bellyfeel that you’ve set the universe into karmic alignment. Since there’s no evidence that capital punishment has a deterrent effect on crime (this can be proven by comparison of statistics between states/countries with capital punishment and without), this is really the ONLY benefit of position (B).
So if you want to prioritize what’s best overall for reducing harm in society, then select (A). If you enjoy appointing yourself the moral arbiter of karma by enforcing who “deserves” to live and die (and killing some innocent people is a price worth paying), then select (B).
Simples!
If ever I would need to be killed, this would be my preferred method of leaving the earth.
Happy to see them try it, even though I am against executing people.
With hypoxia, you get euphoria prior to death. No suffering, no pain, just a little high to send you off this earth.
Should do it to animals too.
Indeed. I have read that the reason we don’t is because it takes too long.
That’s why they use CO2 asphyxiation, but in my opinion, that’s torture.
CO2 asphyxiation is extremely unpleasant. That is absolutely torture, and it is not in any way shape or form an ethical way to euthanize anything.
Leave the earth? “This” earth? What do you mean?
When people leave this earth they are welcomed onto the yearly space rocket that asends into the heavens. After a month of travel they land on Pluto, where the big farm in the sky is. That’s where your pets and grandparents are. Pluto is called Earth3 by the people on it.
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That sounds way too close to Hale-Bopp /Heaven’s Gate.
It’s nothing like that.
I charge a lot more money.Sign me up!
Off topic but I just checked and their website is still there. Feels macabre.
That makes sense, thank you
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sounds like someone never learned about Xenu and the other earths.
Tsk tsk tsk. What are they teaching in school these days…
Ah, a fellow OT III.
It’s a common English phrase that refers to dying. The use of “earth” uncapitalized refers to the ground or land, not the planet Earth. You might be more familiar with the variant “leave this earthly plane,” which, by the way, has nothing to do with airplanes.
He means die. People use lots of euphemisms when talking about death. This is one of them.
Prosecutors said Smith was one of two men who were each paid $1,000 to kill Sennett on behalf of her husband, who was deeply in debt and wanted to collect on insurance.
$1000? Dirty deeds and they’re done dirt cheap.
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.
Not only are there plenty of people who have no problem with it, there’s plenty of people who will be upset the killing wasn’t more barbaric.
And it’s pure blood-lust. They know the criminal can never reoffend. They know the death won’t bring back the victims or bring peace to their family. They know it won’t stop other people committing the same crime. They weren’t impacted by the crime in the slightest and don’t seem to have any real compassion for those who were.
But they want to see the criminals fry anyway.
Threads like this make it extremely clear the the reason the western world isn’t executing women in soccer stadiums is because the people who make those decisions said “no”, not because it wouldn’t draw a crowd.
Yup, if this takes off, we can absolutely expect people to start complaining that death row criminals are getting off easy.
People will pull out the usual excuses for cruelty in our criminal justice system “well, their victim didn’t get a peaceful death!” and shit like that. As though making the perpetrator (and it’s always a possibility that they were falsely convicted) suffer an agonizing death will retroactively lessen the victims stuffering.
Its sick, but it’s absolutely going to happen.
I’ll admit, it’s an improvement over previous methods, though that’s not saying much. Everything’s normal, breathing fine, until lights out!
My objection to the death penalty is that sooner or later, it’s inevitable, the law will fuck it up and execute innocent people. Some people just can’t do adulting around this. Sooner or later, a crime happens, people clamor for blood, the state rounds up the wrong guy and railroads him.
This isn’t experimentation and it isn’t new. I fucking hate this talking point. It’s a well-established, safe, and potentially harmless method, unlike the shit we were doing before.
Still doesn’t make it right.
Wether a country still has a death penalty ot not is a pretty good indicator for how civilised it is.
Most socially developed countries abolished it over the course of the past 100 years.
Another indicator is whether the people in a country still divide the world into “civilized” and “uncivilized” countries.
It is a spectrum.
But i hope you dont want to argue that falsely convicting and killing people, using botched methods involving a lot of pain and suffering can be considered civilised.
Every country can be considered uncivilized in its own way.
So… a spectrum.
No, a spectrum implies that a country can “more” or “less” civilized. But there is no civilizometer capable of such a determination.
It’s the same reason why countries do not lie on a spectrum when judging whether they have “beautiful” or “ugly” inhabitants. Any attempt at a ranking is hopelessly biased.
Or just subjective.
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.
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No, that’s not even remotely the same thing as inert gas asphyxiation.
When you get no oxygen at all, you pass out very quickly, you don’t suffer like you do with low levels of oxygen over extended periods.
Don’t fear monger please.
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Something I’ve been thinking about: for the victim, does it actually matter if it’s nitrogen or a well-aimed bullet/axe/guillotine? For the onlookers, sure the nitrogen looks a lot cleaner, but instant death is painless too.
I’d argue, yes it matters.
Bullet might not be as well aimed as expected, considering some of the firing squad have blanks, and most of them probably don’t really want to be there.
Beheadings are reported to result in animated heads… and I would assume something like a waterfall of pain as the nerves from the body are severed but the brain, where consciousness lives, goes on for a bit yet. It might be quick, but it doesn’t seem pleasant.
Electric chairs, just look them up, same with lethal injection problems… any “justice death” is basically torture.
At least they can’t fuck up neutral gas asphyxiation. It’s either deadly or you sleep through it and wake up with a nasty headache.
Watching the murder states scramble for new ways to murder as they run out of unethical people willing to sell them murder supplies has been interesting.
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Pro death
Ok, so gas chambers again
Edit: my issue is not with the inhumanity, there is no way the state can humanely kill people. I’m wary that republican governments desire the kind of infrastructure that can quickly and cheaply kill many people at a time, boxcars full, in fact
No, this is far more humane. The state shouldn’t kill anyone since the rate of false convictions is significant, but doing the wrong thing in a more humane manner is better than making an innocent person suffer even more.
So it’s a chamber you fill with a gas that kills people, but it’s not a gas chamber
All chambers that are not a vacuum are gas chambers
A gas chamber, as the term has been used so far, is for a chamber where gasses that are not normally part of the regular atmosphere are used to kill someone in violently painful ways with a massive amount of suffering.
The atmosphere is almost 80% nitrogen, and this approach makes it 100%. It doesn’t have the parts we need, but is not introducing something new.
It is not a gas that kills people, it is the removal of the gasses we need to live without the suffering caused by an increase of co2.
I wonder if you were in there, would you appreciate the distinction?
YES.
The normal gas chamber causes obvious pain and torment as people vomit and writhe in agony. 100% nitrogen puts you to sleep. If I had an incurable disease with a lot of suffering, or sentenced to death from a false conviction, I would absolutely choose 100% nitrogen over any other method of offing myself.
Well, I hope Alabama getting industrial scale killing capabilities is worth dying on this hill
Many ways of killing people can be done on big scale. Do you have some specific information about Alabama planning to make it large scale or are you worried because it includes gas?
“Industrial scale” is something you made up in this conversation. That was not done in good faith. Have a good day.
What the fuck are you even talking about? Do you think they are going to implement industrial levels of death penalties just because they found a less horrific way to kill people?
Is it a moral alternative to provide the inmate with a choice of execution method?
Depending on how I ended up there, I’d want the person who wrote the law to kill me themself, especially if it was a BS law. They should feel the impact of what they did.
Alternatively, tie me up in the woods with 2 bags of gun powered around my neck and a timer. Give me a sporting chance.
6 million ways to die. Choose one.
I mean that’s fair, but I meant more like “hey you can test this new method of execution, or you can have the lethal injection.”
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.
Let’s tighten this up a bit.
Inert gas asphyxiation is very much a great way to go, but it’s basically symptomless until after you lose consciousness.
You don’t get high. The “high” people get is when they are choked out. I’m not really sure on the mechanism of that, though. You don’t get lightheaded. The lightheadedness is from the blood oxygen levels increasing.
This is why it’s very dangerous to enter enclosed spaces. You simply don’t know you’re about to die until it’s too late. Plus, people come in to try to rescue you and succumb as well.
Anyway, lots of people have this experience. It’s a common part of training for rebreathers for use in scuba diving.
As far as good ways to die, inert gas asphyxiation is up there with “proper” lethal injection (i.e. with a commercial euthanasia drug), opiate overdose, or just anesthetizing the being and doing whatever gets the job done.
Nitrogen can cause a “high” (aka nitrogen narcosis), but this effect only occurs at high pressures. So it is only a practical concern for divers, because they have to breathe high pressure air. Some divers replace the nitrogen in their tanks with other gases to avoid it.
It is unrelated to asphyxiation, and can occur even when the lungs are properly exchanging oxygen and CO2. It is a poorly understood direct interaction between high pressure nitrogen and the brain that does not occur at atmospheric pressure.
When I did my deep diving certification one of the things they got us to do was try and do maths of varying complexity (compared to previously doing it on the surface). I didn’t feel high at all, but most of us had slower response times and more errors at depth, apparently as a side effect of the increased nitrogen. Pretty wild.
Correct. Extremely different thing.
Also, despite what they say in fight club, oxygen does not get you high either.
Nitrous oxide however…
IIRC the hypoxia
“high”panic reaction is from an elevated level of CO2 - that’s the evolved mechanism by which humans detect they’re in a bad place for breathing. Not absence of O2.Edit: Correction: Hypoxia alone gets you high just before you keel over. It’s the CO2 buildup that activates your body’s panic reactions.
When I was ~10 I attended a wedding. Me and the other kids where tasked to fill balloons with helium and we did so without supervision. Naturally, we breathed some helium in and talked in funny voices.
I then had the bright idea to try to breathe as many of these balloons without normal air in between.
After the third of these, I lost conciousness. To me it felt as if I was gone for maybe half an hour. I was basically dreaming weird stuff. Luckily I stayed in my seat during that time and didn’t fall over or something. Noone of the others noticed anything, so it couldn’t have been that long. Maybe a few seconds in reality.
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!
Because using your drug to kill people isn’t the best way to convince the public is perfectly safe. There would be a hundred TikToks talking about how anesthesiologists want to murder you with propofol and then claim you died accidentally on the operating table. Who are you going to believe, actual “doctors” or highly qualified TikTok influencers?
Yeah, no drug company wants to deal with that. That’s why governments have had difficulty sourcing these drugs and instead have been resorting to black market dealers.
They used to use thiopental, which is similar to propofol, with similar onset, both as an anesthesic and for lethal injection. Manufacturers stopped producing it because its use was controversial. Now it’s not even available for anesthesia. It would suck if the same thing happened to propofol.
Because the idea of it being a punishment, rather than remediation or simply mitigation, looms over all North American discussions about sentencing.
If they aren’t miserable then it’s not a punishment.
But… the whole reason we are having this discussion is because people are trying to make the process less miserable in their final moments.
Which is weird. Them not being in control of their demise and subsequently being locked up and denied freedom is in itself a punishment. Remember the toolbox killers? they died in obscurity in jail. Same with manson and his convicted cronies. they tried to get parole and i can only presume they got laughed at because he died in prison as well. dead is dead. torture takes too much time and only enforces the convicts belief that humanity is awful. if we kill them with time or painless drugs that’s an insult to their nature id think. designer drugs to drop you off the face of this existence sounds pretty scary.
Manson and his cronies did not exactly die in obscurity. They had, and still have, groupies.
In the case of Propofol they did want to use it but were basically banned by the drug company.
The real answer is that the makers of Propofol specifically don’t want you to use it to kill people.
Furthermore, if the US does use Propofol to execute anyone it will likely find itself suffering a shortage of Propofol to use as an anaesthetic in future.
anesthesiologist
There you have it, qualified medical professionals refuse (and are not allowed to anyway because of the oath) to participate in executions. So the people administring whatever concoction is made are not medically trained nor usually even particularily knowledgable on the subject. And yes, this has caused a series of botched executions, to the extent that the most bloodthirsty states are looking at smimpler ways to execute. Hence this aricle.
They already render the prisoner unconcious when they administer the lethal injection. It’s not 100% effective though, thus the search for a method that doesn’t have the potential to horrify onlookers.
Because the people selling it don’t want to deal with the association with lethal injections
Just imagining the reverse, if they used propofol commonly for executions and then you go for a surgery and the doctor informs you that you’ll be getting the same stuff they use for executions, but don’t worry it’s a milder dose
I mean, they DO use midazolam and the same paralytics for lethal injection that are also commonly used for anesthesia, just in a lower dose.
It’s one of the more humane methods of assisted suicide. But also it’s the death penalty so not a good thing
the state shouldn’t have authority to do this but thank god they’re at least trying to be humane now [an excuse to push for the death penalty more?]
i mean why is it even a question, i’d happily take this or a simple bullet over the horrible nerve acid shit they use now
That’s their problem: The nerve acid shit makers had a change of heart and stopped making it.
It’s a bit of theatre IMHO most executions are extra judicial thank to
Dreddcops.
I really don’t think it would be painless. Probably feel like you are being suffocated and breathe in more air only for it to be without any oxygen and feel even worse. The last moments would be pure mental torture.
As stated elsewhere, the discomfort that you feel what you’re being suffocated is not from lack of oxygen. It is from build up of carbon dioxide. When you are breathing nitrogen, you can still exhale that carbon dioxide. You don’t get that panicked feeling of needing a breath.
TIL. Thanks for the explanation. Guess i was wrong then.
It’s refreshing to hear somebody admit they can be wrong and learn from it. This platform is pretty cool.
You weren’t wrong. There’s an explanation by @[email protected] further down the thread. They make a convincing argument that nitrogen asphyxiation likely leads to generalized pain and terror before seizures and death.
I think you might be panicking because you know you will die regardless. But then again that’s how all death penalties work.
