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.
Folks who are confused by this, your body doesn’t detect when you’re low on oxygen, only when you have too much carbon dioxide. That’s why exhaling while holding your breath helps you hold your breath longer (to an extent). Nitrogen doesn’t caused the sensation of suffocating while still depriving you of oxygen.
I disagree with capital punishment but have always wondered about this for stuff like assisted suicide.
Unless you have COPD. That’s why’s it’s dangerous to give high flow O2 to people with COPD.
Over this summer I’ve been trying to break my record for holding breath underwater. 2:13 was best I could muster but in my experimentation, after slow and steady initial breathing and reduced muscle usage, inhaling one giant breath at the end and holding definitely let’s me stay under longer. This is better until the CO2 saturation of my lungs equals the saturation in the blood. Then, for whatever reason, slowly trickling the air out buys a little more time. This probably helps calm and fool the brain into thinking you’re desaturating.
That’s the thing, we all have to compromise. I don’t support it either, but if something unethical happens, and people still want to keep supporting it, we have to at least convince them to use the “best version” of said thing so it’s at least as humane as we can make it possibly be. I’m shocked we still continue to use these complicated and ancient methods of execution that have questionable reliability or ethics when it comes to suffering.
It’d be interesting to see how it would be used for AS for sure!
Small government folks sure are horny about giving their government the power to murder them.
Alabama:
we’re innovating! :D
Everyone else:
bro what the fuck
“Wat? It’s just unusual it’s not cruel y’all!”–Alabama, probably.
Pretty weird phrasing of the headline, like states are excited to kill someone in new and novel ways.
They are, that’s just the truth.
It’s Alabama…
Well, in Alabama and in in some states (cough, Texas) they probably are I’m afraid.
Have you been to America lately?
I live here. Have you, or do you base your opinions or it on headlines?
Born and raised in Indiana. Live in Terre Haute, where the federal prison where they execute inmates is located.
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.
If you really want to execute someone and NOT botch it, nothing beats the guillotine.
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This is how I would want to go. Look up BBC Horizon 2008 How to Kill a Human Being. Explains everything you need to know. Seems like states don’t want to do it because people wouldn’t suffer during execution. Maybe things have changed since then.
Is it really an execution if there is no suffering? /s
Seems like states don’t want to do it because people wouldn’t suffer during execution.
Is lethal injection painful?
yes, they paralyze you then inject you with poison
Being poisoned isn’t necessarily painful. What poison do they inject?
Here’s an article about it: https://www.npr.org/2020/09/21/793177589/gasping-for-air-autopsies-reveal-troubling-effects-of-lethal-injection
It was a severe form of a condition called pulmonary edema, which can induce the feeling of suffocation or drowning.
I don’t understand how we have problems with people dying in the streets from opioid overdoses or mixing benzos and alcohol, but the government can’t find a way to kill people without drowning them in their own blood.
Because the cruelty is the point. Nitrogen asphyxiation has been known for a long time. The Sarco suicide pod uses it because it’s a peaceful death. The whole reason it hasn’t been adopted is because they want the condemned to suffer.
Well, I can’t imagine why we got rid execution with electricity if they are supposed to suffer.
Seems like states don’t want to do it because people wouldn’t suffer during execution
To me it seems like they’re trying to make the process more acceptable to the public so they can delight in more of them.
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 get that it is ‘humane,’ but I get scared when I see humans developing and organizing highly efficient ways to exterminate humans, such as gas chambers.
I don’t think this is intended to improve efficiency.
Suffocation cannot possibly be considered “humane.”
The US frankly terrifies me these days.
I can confirm from personal experience that breathing pure nitrogen is painless and not at all like suffocating. If you want, you can check my profile to find the comment or look for it further up in a reply to a different thread in this post
I’m glad you’re here to share this insight. Hope things are better now.
Wait, you’re dead? I’m glad to hear it was painless.
Sadly yes, but I lived!
Had a hell of a headache/migraine the next few days afterwards though
So it was totally painless and then you had terrible migrains from something else?
The process itself of breathing in the pure nitrogen and going unconscious was completely painless.
When I woke up later on I had a terrible migraine that lasted a few days because not breathing in enough Oxygen will cause headaches and migraines. Had I not woken up though then there would not have been any pain from that side effect because I’d instead be dead
I know how it works, I know how anesthesia works. I know how a close range shotgun to the head works. It’s painless. We should never be doing it. For me, I’ll choose THC. Then, ketamine, then some NO2, then switch it to N. Then gulliotine.
Nitrogen asphyxiation does not equal suffocation. It displaces the oxygen in your lungs. Discomfort from suffocation is from build up of carbon dioxide, not lack of oxygen. For the brief period of time that you are still conscious, you can still exhale that carbon dioxide.
That seems unlikely. As @[email protected] explains further down the thread, it would likely lead to generalized pain and terror before seizures and death.
@protist is talking about nitrogen narcosis, which is a completely different thing.
No, they’re not. Read the post.
Yes, I did. Read my post.
They said:
Nitrogen narcosis happens to deep sea divers breathing compressed air, this would be straight up hypoxia, aka oxygen deprivation. Here’s what it does to your brain:
Nitrogen narcosis happens because when you are under pressure, like when underwater, gases are more easily dissolved. The nitrogen that is in your body dissolves into your tissues and basically anesthetizes you to death.
Nitrogen asphyxiation, like what we’re talking about here, is when the nitrogen that you breathe displaces the oxygen in your lungs. This causes the oxygen levels in your blood to drop, which is what kills you.
You said:
@protist is talking about nitrogen narcosis
@protist@[email protected] said:
…this would be straight up hypoxia, aka oxygen deprivation
I have a scuba certification. I know what nitrogen narcosis is. @protist is clearly not talking about nitrogen narcosis. They’re describing what would actually happen in the case of being forced to breathe pure nitrogen, which is straight up suffocation.
suffocation
noun
death caused by not having enough oxygen, or the act of killing someone by not allowing them to have enough oxygen
–Cambridge Dictionary
Yes he is. Nitrogen narcosis is from breathing compressed air with a high nitrogen blend. That’s why you need trimix with helium beyond a couple hundred feet. Otherwise you end up like my buddy trying to give fish your regulator.
Read. the. damn. post!
That guy is misinformed. He is talking about hypoxia which is what people commonly think of when dying from lack of oxygen, think of drowning. Hypoxia triggers the alarms in your body that cause the fear and pain you associate with suffocating due to the build up of co2 in the body.
With inert gases like nitrogen however it is different. Check out this wiki article, in the process drop down tab is provides a pretty good explanation on the matter
Not misinformed, I forgot it takes.pressure.to.get narcd, but asphyxiation does cause some of the same feelings. Narcd is nitrogen asphyxiation, but it has other effects, and the feeling is more intense before reaching total asphyxiation, and therefore it is easier to recover from. It takes the pressure for the nitrogen to bind to the oxygen receptors.
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 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.
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.
But… the whole reason we are having this discussion is because people are trying to make the process less miserable in their final moments.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Because the people selling it don’t want to deal with the association with lethal injections
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.
Can someone enlighten me why it’s so hard to find an execution method?
I mean, tens of thousands of teens manage to execute themselves with the content of an average bathroom. How can it be that hard to find a fitting method?
Especially if there are things like carbon monoxide poisoning which has been used by hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people to accidentally kill themselves without them even noticeing.
And if you want a method that’s guaranteed to be painless, put someone’s head into a large fires cutter and drop a 10 ton weight onto it from 50 meters height. In an instance, there’s noting left that could feel weight.
Or ask Ocean Gate for advice. From what Youtube told me, submersible implosings happen within a few milliseconds and have so much speed and pressure that they effectively vaporize the people inside. Pretty sure that’s rather painless.
First, no licensed medical personnel can participate since it violates the Hippocratic oath, so you have to design the protocol without any input from anyone who understands the human body well enough or any scientific studies because human experimentation designed to end a life is illegal. And then also carry it out without people who know how to find a vein, much less understanding what to do when things go wrong.
And if it requires drugs or complex equipment whose sole use is executions, very few companies are going to want that contract. It’s not lucrative with no other uses, and you tarnish your reputation and possibly lose more lucrative contracts in less conservative states.
There are very few methods that are effective and painless for everyone and not messy since you want people to watch, including the victims’ friends and families. That way you can justify the act, pretend that you’re using it as a crime deterrent, and fewer people are likely to feel sorry for the person and stop future executions. And it has to be cheap because one of the justifications is that life in prison is so costly.
Honestly, the best bet for painlessness, ease of execution, and simplicity of the equipment and maintenance is the guilotine. But it’s messy and most people don’t want to see a headless body fall to the ground. And it’s hard to find workers to clean up after.
Honestly, the best bet for painlessness, ease of execution, and simplicity of the equipment and maintenance is the guillotine.
I was thinking about a 50t weight. 10x10x10 cube of steel, put you into a socket, have you stand in the middle, drop. by the time your brain could register pain, everything would be a few mm thick layer of you-goo. It’d work every time, and you wouldn’t have to worry about the eyes blinking after, or the body running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off. No brain function would upset the executed.
If I had to be executed, something like that would be vastly preferable to dying via asphyxiation whether chemical induced or atmospheric deprivation…
But, you don’t have to. You just get a butcher who knows how to do a carbon monoxide execution on animals and apply the same thing to humans.
All you need is to pipe the exhaust of an old gasoline engine into a room and be done with it.
Costs nothing, doesn’t require medical personell, not even medical equipment. There are tousands of people in the US who routinely do it and it’s as cheap as can be. All you need is an old car or a scrap engine, a hose and some gasoline.
But I guess, since it was the favourite form of execution of the Nazis, it would probably be pretty on-the-nose about how terrible the act of state-sponsored murder is.
The issue is this may be considered “cruel and unusual” punishment, and that is what lethal injection was designed to avoid. However, there are all sorts of problems with lethal injection in practice. Nitrogen would effectively be a better lethal injection without the complications (drug inventory, dosing amounts, etc).
The issue here isn’t killing people. It’s doing so in a way the defense lawyer can’t argue against to a judge.
Tbh, the lethal injection with all that regularly goes wrong with it is super cruel and unusual.
And isn’t murder in any instance cruel and unusual?
It all has to do with the Pharmaceutical industry.
Without going on a whole dissertation, there are a lot of aspects that have to be figured out for a government sanctioned execution to occur.
You could in theory just have an officer whip out a shotgun and bang, problem solved, much like you mentioned with suicide. But when it’s sanctioned by the government you have to be very discerning with a lot of different details.
Why are we ending this person’s life
Because we have deemed their actions excessively heinous and do not want them to drain further on society by being incarcerated
In ending their life should we be causing them pain?
Huge debate, but the main reason we use lethal injection or gas executions instead now is to end their life without pain or torture. Ideally a person would just be turned off like a light without them even noticing.
How can you be sure you got the right person
Big question, but we are talking execution
What if the execution fails or goes incorrectly, now we’ve maimed someone and caused undue suffering, which as a people we have decided we wouldn’t do.
Exactly. That’s why there are so many issues surrounding lethal injection chemicals and sources. How do you create these chemicals properly and precisely, without spending excess money or profiting off govt sanctioned murder.
Why not carbon monoxide?
Short answer, it’s flammable and dangerous to the people performing the executions. That’s why nitrogen is a decent possibility for something like this, it is inert, common, and can be acquired and vented away with little issue.
In ending their life should we be causing them pain? Huge debate, but the main reason we use lethal injection or gas executions instead now is to end their life without pain or torture. Ideally a person would just be turned off like a light without them even noticing.
Interestingly enough, because of certain happenings, these methods are often poorly prepared by a layman after a quick google search and mostly made to look like a quick death, with the person often suffering even for half an hour. We already have a solution. It’s called a guillotine. After 4 seconds the person is all gone, but it’s a messy death for any onlookers, so it’s not used.
For anyone interested, here is a great video about how executions basically never changed in all but look: https://youtu.be/eirR4FHY2YY?si=9y_dbu8SBiDyPos-
Why are we ending this person’s life
Because we have deemed their actions excessively heinous and do not want them to drain further on society by being incarcerated
No. It costs more to execute someone than keep them incarcerated for many many decades. We end people’s lives because we have a justice boner and we imagine (incorrectly) that punishing people in this way will deter others from committing the same crimes.
The study estimates that the average cost to Maryland taxpayers for reaching a single death sentence is $3 million - $1.9 million more than the cost of a non-death penalty case. (This includes investigation, trial, appeals, and incarceration costs.)
That’s why I had the “and heinous actions” part. Life in prison is already a thing, we don’t execute people who got life, as you said it’s more expensive. But I suppose I could have better phrased it as “their actions were heinous enough that we don’t believe they deserve to have the right to life within our society”.
ie Justice Boner. Life in prison is already separating them from society. We just like the feeling of state mandated murdering of murderers.
It was so surprising to me when that serial baby killing nurse was in the news before her sentencing and headlines were speculating that she might get a rare life sentence (she did, she got 7 consecutive life sentences). But even through all that, the British people were commenting “I hope she gets the mental health help she needs while she’s in there” in sharp contrast to what US people usually say about hoping people suffer/are tortured/murdered in prison. Americans were voicing more gruesome hopes for Elizabeth Holmes’ prison stay than Brits did about Lucy Letby. We’re a brutal society.
I am solidly against executions and quite aware of the moral dilemata.
I was just on about how easy it actually would be.
Why not carbon monoxide?
Short answer, it’s flammable and dangerous to the people performing the executions. That’s why nitrogen is a decent possibility for something like this, it is inert, common, and can be acquired and vented away with little issue.
Tbh, I don’t think that’s an issue. Carbon monoxide is used in slaughterhouses worldwide. You’d think if it’s safe enough to handle for unskilled workers at industrial scale that a few highly paid executioners could use it without blowing up the complex.
Case in point: even the nazis managed to handle it at industrial scale 80 years ago. And their budget for an execution wasn’t remotely as high as the US has.
I mean, it’s probably not as sexy, because it directly shows how straight-up evil the practice of state-sponsored murder is (you know, using the same methods as literally the Nazis did), but then again, if you are a murder state, you are already past the point where you had a right to discuss ethics and morals.
you’re absolutely not past the point to discuss morals wtf?
you think just because people are executed the methods don’t matter?
Tbh, yes. If you like state-sponsored murder, there is no point not using a simple, foolproof, painless method that is executed tens of thousands of times per day (on animals), just because it’s the method the Nazis preferred and thus makes you look a little bad.
Mudering people already makes them look bad, and their mess with all these botched executions just makes them look bad AND incompetent.
Part of the reason might be because lethal injection requires substances that are mostly manufactured in the EU and the EU refuses to sell it to the USA because they don’t want it to be used for killing people.
“tens of thousands” isnt even remotely close. A few hundred is more accurate. It’s important to be realistic with these figures so people don’t convince themselves it is normal to do.
Correct, my estimate was an order of magnitude too low.
Worldwide, an estimated 700 000 people commit suicide per year. https://www.iasp.info/wspd/references/
That’s almost 16 million since 2000.
In the EU, that’s ~56 000 per year (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/DDN-20180716-1).
In the US it was 49449 in 2022 (https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html), of which 6529 where <24 (can’t find data for <20).
I didn’t specify a country and I didn’t specify a time frame. But your estimate of “a few hundred” is a number that would fit for “number of teens that commit suicide in the EU or the US in a 1-2 week timeframe”, and that was certainly not the definition I was going for.
Brushing the issue under the table and trying to hide it will not help those who struggle with suicidal tendencies. Feeling like you are the only one going through this does not help. If you struggle with suicidal thoughts, you are seriously not alone. For everyone who does commit suicide, there are hundreds who struggle with the topic but manage to get past it. Please get help, you are worth it.
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That’s a pretty good way to go, apparently.
But there have been an absolutely breathtaking number of death row cases that have been overturned due to new evidence that had exonerated the condemned.
It seems pretty clear that the state is doing a very crappy job of determining guilt, and therefore shouldn’t be handing down such a permanent sentence.
This is what changed my mind on the death penalty. I have no problem putting a murderer or pedo to death, but we keep freeing people when new evidence is found that proves their innocents. Until we can get it right 100% of the time, we should just lock them up until death.
I used to fully pro death penalty, especially for some of the sick fucks…
But then I learned about all the false convictions, some COERCED by the fucking police, and since then I’m 100% against the death penalty.
The satisfaction I get from a heinous killer getting killed, does not outweigh the horror I feel for even one innocent life being taken by the state.
Right. Even a life sentence can very much be reversed if exculpatory evidence appears.
It can be overturned, but it can’t be reversed. You can’t give someone those years back.
It’s also cheaper to keep people in jail forever than put them to death because of all the appeals. And despite being more careful, we still get it wrong.
Also, in my mind, death is a release. Keep those fuckers stuck in their filty meat suits while they rot in prison for the rest of their lives with no hope for escape. The especially heinous ones will get extra comeuppance from the other inmates
I would argue that we need the death penalty as a way to protect society from the absolutely most dangerous criminals but it’s very frequently misapplied. I would say, for instance, that people that are serial killers, or serial rapists (or serial child molesters), people for whom there is no significant doubt that they’re guilty, and people that will reoffend if they ever manage to get out of prison, should be executed. A simple murder for hire, or a robbery? No. Ed Kemper? Absolutely.
I think that even life sentences with no parole are overused; most people can be rehabilitated and returned to society safely, if we were willing to dramatically overhaul our criminal justice system to not be based on punishment and retribution. (But if we did that, then how would we get free prison labor…? /s)
It’s wild you disagree with life sentences and desire rehab, but also advocate for the death penalty.
I advocate for it in the case of people that can not reasonably be rehabilitated and pose an unreasonable risk to the existence of other people.
I don’t know why that’s difficult to wrap your head around.
You aren’t going to rehabilitate a serial killer, or a serial rapist.
Can’t know if you don’t try. Some artists have come out and said they had these urges and art is the thing anchoring them enough to keep them from doing heinous things.
keep them from doing
…And there’s your key. Moreover, they think that art keeps them from doing it; they have no way of experimentally knowing whether or not they’d do those things in the absence of art. It seems more likely that art is their excuse and that, in the absence of art, they would find anothe,r different reason to avoid committing atrocities.
There’s a distinction between wanting to do a thing, and actually doing the thing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_country
All of western Europe has abolished the death oenalty completely. Many of these are countries with very low rates of serious crime.
Meanwhile countries with the death penalty, but usually also very long prison sentences and high rates of incarcerations like the US are pretty bad with crime.
It is impossible to justifiy the death penalty empirically. The statistics actually indicate that the death penalty is linked to more crime.
Also the problem is, that clear cut beyond a doubt is what every judge who sentences someone to death, will claim about the case. Yet there is hundreds of cases in the US alone, where people were later exonerated. Some only after they have been murdered by the state already. There is nothing to gain, but a lot to loose with an execution. It cannot be overruled anymore.
The statistics actually indicate that the death penalty is linked to more crime.
Correlation =/= causation. C’mon, you know better than this. It’s more probable that they have lower crime to begin with. Serial killers are not uniquely American by any stretch of the imagination, but they are quite uncommon relative to the population in other developed countries.
Read what I wrote again. I’m advocating for the death penalty in very, very limited cases, where there is no significant doubt at all, where there is no reasonable or even unreasonable belief that an offender can be rehabilitated, and the offender is extremely likely to harm more people if they ever have the opportunity.
Thats why i said indicate not “proof”. But again you say no significant doubt at all. But that is always the case of the people making the decision. For them there is no doubt, yet there is regularly wrong decisions.
Would you then claim that there was any significant doubt as to the guilt of John Gacy, Theodore Bundy, Edmund Kemper, Gary Ridgeway, John Geoghan, et al.? Would you agree that they would have all posed a significant risk of future harms had they managed to escape?
No proof is 100% absolute; there is always the possibility of some error. Video evidence? Could be tampered with. Eyewitnesses? Memory is fallible. DNA? Must be from someone with near identical DNA. Confession? Those are very frequently coerced (and, seriously, confessions are a pretty terrible way of determining guilt, esp. when there’s no forensic or corroborating evidence). 29 bodies or people you were last seen with found in the crawlspace of your home with your DNA and fingerprints on them? Pure coincidence, it’s too good to be true, must be planted.
Given that it’s impossible to know a thing with absolute certainty, how good does the evidence have to be before you would admit that there was not a significant chance of a false positive?
Prisons (at least in the US) have never been about prisoners and their reform. It’s about how much money they can bring in from the state and practically free labor. Like most things in the US it is driving by profit margins.
…yay capitalism
Eh, no. We had prisons before we used prisons as a stand-in for chattel slavery. OTOH, we used to kill a lot more people for much less severe offenses, so people didn’t usually end up in jails for very long. And there was a period of time where we believed in reform, but that was well over 100 years ago now.
Yeah this is one reason why I generally don’t support the death penalty. There’s no way to undo it. At least if evidence exonerates someone 50 years later, they’re still alive.
Yep, NO. I’ve tried it. You can’t get a breath and you feel like you’re suffocating.
Sure, Jan.
Can you please share more of your experience? What was the occasion and the set-up? What was it like?
Definitely doesn’t seem terribly traumatic - https://youtu.be/176eog7mZjc?si=B4TPpWw7CJb-IGXl
(CW - shows pig putting its head into a box filled with inert gas to eat food. The pig falls over, regains consciousness, then immediately places its head back into the box to continue eating)
That’s not the case with nitrogen asphyxiation.
Nitrogen hypoxia is a risk wherever liquid nitrogen is used. If too much boils too fast, it will displace the oxygen in the room. People in the room won’t even realize what happened until they pass out and die shortly thereafter.
There are reports of people rushing in to rescue those who passed out, and suddenly passing out themselves and needing to be rescued as well. That’s how insidious it is. And that’s why MRI scanners (which use liquid nitrogen) have oxygen sensors in the room. You can’t trust your own body to tell you that all the oxygen is gone.
MRI machines are cooled by liquid helium. Nitrogen is not cold enough. I’d imagine as a noble gas it has a similar effect though.
They are cooled by liquid helium, but also have a liquid nitrogen outer dewar as well with a vacuum insulator in between. The N2 takes the brunt of the ambient heat so you don’t have to top off the (much more expensive) helium as often.
Then you haven’t tried it. Your body is still able to dump co2, so the asphyxiation effect doesn’t kick in.
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My wife is a detective and deals with a lot of suicides. Use of nitrogen or helium are the new go to for folks that wanna go peacefully. That’s why the party balloon helium tanks have 10% o2 in them now. They were a popular, cheap method sadly. The human body doesn’t give two shits whether it’s breathing a 80% nitrogen/20% oxygen, or 100% nitrogen. All it needs is something that can displace the co2 in your blood. Nitrogen works just as well as o2 for this. It’s when the body can’t exhaust co2 that it goes into asphyxiation. If you were having problems breathing, you were breathing the wrong stuff. It’s biology, yo.
Good to know.
I had just assumed the party helium situation was caused by the shortage.
Helium (as a suicide method) has been around a while. My best friend used it to kill himself 13 years ago. Maybe it’s making a comeback.
Years ago when I was in a bad place in life I attempted suicide using a tank of nitrogen and an oven bag. Thankfully I was stupid as hell and didn’t tie the bag properly or something. So when I passed out the bag managed to come off somehow. Still not entirely sure how it happened but either way I’m thankful it did and I managed to survive for better days.
Anyways, Im telling you this to let you know I can very much confirm that breathing nitrogen is painless and was no different than regular breathing.
Your body only starts the alarm bells when it can’t exchange out the co2 in your lungs. It can’t really tell the difference between pure nitrogen and some other gases coming in vs the optimal mixture we need to breath. So the alarms never really go off. There’s more to the science behind it, but it’s kind of a glaring flaw evolution left in our bodys survival system that can be taken advantage of including for use in anesthetic.
So did it feel like you just went to sleep and then woke up?
Glad you did such a terrible job of it!
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Yeah sort of. At first I started feeling very drunk, but not like normal drunk. I can’t really think of good analogy other than it was like half way in between drunk and a small amount of anesthetic maybe?
It was this slow dip into unconscious, it wasn’t like sleeping where I’m vaguely aware of the passage of time. But it wasn’t the instant knock out of anesthetic or normal unconscious either. It was like lowering myself into a pool if that make sense. Wasn’t a bad feeling, just kind of different. Had an awful migraine that lasted a couple of days afterwards though.
Thanks I’m extremely happy everday with my failure! Lol
I’m glad you’re still with us, friend.
well, the science behind feeling out of breath is CO2 being pumped into lungs from blood, lol
I was beginning to wonder if breathing pure nitrogen was some kind of party trick or rite of passage for science geeks.
I’ve been in a high altitude simulation chamber to experience hypoxia after rapid decompression. 💯 didn’t give a fuck, was a bit giddy, and if left there long enough with dwindling oxygen would have for sure died. No problem taking a breath.
So in effect, yes tried it.
Four of spades?
haha I can’t remember if we were doing cards like that or not. I remember having to answer questions writing them down on a form. Between the handwriting and the answers themselves it was hilarious; and of course educational. It was for certification to do high altitude jumps. you can bet your ass I made sure I was on oxygen per regs every time. No forgetting to pull the cord for me thank you very much.
I have, sort of. I’ve worked HazMat most of my life. One of the jobs I had years ago involved neutralizing a large pit of acid. It was just a huge pit in the ground with a roof over it. From the outside, it just looked like someone had pulled the roof off of a house and set on the ground. There were only two openings, one at either end, so it was completely enclosed. The method here was to send the two youngest (and therefore invincible) guys into the pit with acid suits and full faced respirators, with buckets of soda ash, we walk around in it and stirred it up while we sprinkled the ash around. Safety standards back then were not what they are today. Anyway, the people in charge realized that there would be a reaction with gases betting released, hence the respirators, but no one considered the possibility that the gases might be heavier than oxygen. Which they were. We didn’t know what kind of acid it was but this was an old fertilizer plant, so probably nitric. Which means the gas was most likely nitrogen. Whatever the case, we got into trouble when we realized that we were both getting rather lightheaded. We tried to leave, but the only way out was up a ladder and by the time we got to it the other guy, we’ll call him Rick, could only get about half way up before he just couldn’t move anymore, which left me leaning on the ladder at the bottom, completely unable to help, as I was in the same state. Luckily, our foreman was a lunatic and he jumped in and pulled us out. You are absolutely not supposed to do that because you are just as likely to end up in the same trouble as the guys you’re trying to save.
The experience with the gas was not unpleasant. I should have been terrified, but was mostly just mildly concerned. The only real effects I remember feeling are the lightheadedness and being really sleepy.
I’m willing to bet what you inhaled was carbon dioxide – that gives an instant feeling of suffocation. Which ironically makes it one of the safer asphyxiant gasses, as it’s heavier than air and you can detect it’s presence instantly. Inert (“noble”) gasses like helium, argon, and nitrogen don’t have that effect.
CO2 is also cheap, readily available, non-toxic, and doesn’t cause physical damage. This makes CO2 asphyxiation somewhat popular for “stunning” or killing in places like slaughterhouses, labs working with smaller animals, or “feeder” animals for reptiles.
breathtaking
Heh
Not to give anyone ideas but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_bag
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.
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?
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”.
I would rather be shot than nitrogen then because I want to die sober.
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?
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?
Knowing you will die in a 6x6 cell, alone, and unwanted by anyone in the whole world is far worse
So… Revenge then?
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.
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…
because a huge percentage of convicted are later exonerated, and a large percentage that aren’t are posthumously exonerated.
I’m talking about where there is zero doubt the crime was committed.
School shootings and the like.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
I am by no means pro death penalty, but I prefer this over the lethal injection. It’s a very painful and horrifying way to go and not at all like the drugs they give someone for medical euthanasia, while suffocating on nitrogen is actually relatively painless.
