Alabama condemned for nitrogen gas execution: ‘They intended to torture him’
Alabama condemned for nitrogen gas execution: ‘They intended to torture him’
State’s ‘slow and agonizing’ execution of Kenneth Smith using an untested method labeled as cruel by experts and advocates
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/14097254
Smith’s execution by “nitrogen hypoxia” took around 22 minutes, according to media witnesses, who were led into a viewing room at the William C Holman correctional facility in Atmore shortly before 8 pm local time.
After the nitrogen gas began flowing, Smith convulsed on the gurney for several minutes. The state had previously said the nitrogen gas would cause Smith to lose consciousness in seconds and die within minutes, according to the Associated Press.
“I’ve been to four previous executions and I’ve never seen a condemned inmate thrash in the way that Kenneth Smith reacted to the nitrogen gas,” Lee Hedgepeth, a journalist who witnessed the execution, told the BBC’s Newsday programme.
Smith’s execution by “nitrogen hypoxia” took around 22 minutes, according to media witnesses, who were led into a viewing room at the William C Holman correctional facility in Atmore shortly before 8 pm local time.
It would have been quicker and more merciful just to shoot him, Jesus Christ.
46Yeah. I don't agree we should have a death penalty at all. It seems pretty telling that over the years we seem to have been progressively getting more painful and extreme in the methods used, all while touting the new method as obviously safer or more humane.
And, I was in favor of nitrogen as a genuinely painless method of killing someone until I heard the details of how they went about it. It really does seem like cruelty to the prisoner is being designed into the process.
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First, all executions should be illegal. But if you do execute someone, nitrogen is the most humane way to do it if done correctly.
If he was thrashing it means that he was rebreathing the same air he exhaled, and the CO2 buildup caused him to thrash and die in agony. How incompetent people must be, this is simple.
31The cruelty is the point.
8I really really hope this is incompetence, because if this is intentional, the person(s) responsible should be criminally liable for it. I'm no lawyer, but this should be a criminal offense to intentionally cause someone physical suffering.
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Why on earth is nitrogen being treated as worse than the gas chamber, electric chair, or lethal injection? All of those are way more painful, akin to torture. Nitrogen suffocation is literally the method that was selected for suicide pods because it doesn't involve any discomfort (aside from, obviously, the knowledge that you're going to die.)
22It turns out there is discomfort involved when the mechanism for delivery doesn't account for the CO2 being exhaled. Nitrogen isn't the problem, but the way they did it was completely asinine.
95So what you're saying is they didn't scrub the CO2 that he expelled and so he basically rebreathed that, triggering the brainstem signal of hypercapnia?
Wouldn't this be resolved by having a tube with a slight negative pressure (like reverse cpap) linked to his nose for exhalation while the nitrogen was pumped via the mouth upon inhalation?
29I mean, they're prison officials in Alabama. I wouldn't expect them to do anything at all in a humane or intelligent way.
25Oh shit. Yeah, that's a real problem. And yeah, if that's true that's totally asinine; they eliminated the one obvious advantage that this method has over all others when it would have been trivial to make sure it was a non-issue.
Maybe deliberately inflicting suffering was a design goal they just couldn't let go of. 😥
Edit: After looking over some of the reasons people are saying he was suffering, I don't see much reason to think so or think CO2 was recirculating. I'm sure it was horrible knowing that he was going to die. I'm against the death penalty in general, and I think a lot of people are opposed to this just because it's horrible to execute someone however you do it. But I'm pretty convinced that there's no real reason to think he suffered physically while he was dying.
16Well that explains why he lived so long. He was living off the air HR started with in his lungs and as he slowly used the oxygen he started with he suffocated over 20 minutes
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Setting aside the national shame that capital punishment is, regardless of the method used, they strapped his face with a mask. He wasn't in a pod as nitrogen levels rose. He was force fed the gas with a mask that prevented him from "breathing" normally.
22According to this article: https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/us/alabama-execution-nitrogen-what-we-know/index.html
They started at 7:53. 22 minutes later they closed the curtain. 10 minutes later they pronounced him dead. I'm thinking that 22 minutes is the source of the 20+ minute claim.
5People also don't consider the people carrying out the execution are individuals that flunked out of college and the military. As no actual person that knows what they are doing. This will be botched every time.
4
Because if people actually cared about painless ways just go back to beheadings.
1"All of those are way more painful, akin to torture."
And you know know this because you've experienced all of them and come back to tell us about it?
-14Here's a summary of some results from cyanide gas executions.
Here's for the electric chair.
Here's a short overview of lethal injection, not as heavy on gory details. But in short, the problem is that a paralyzing agent is one of the elements injected, and reports from people who survived botched executions are that it was excruciatingly painful and they were simply unable to indicate any distress.
It's absurd to say that because I haven't personally been executed I can't learn anything about it or have an opinion on it.
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Glad they are being condemned for it.
7Shame that Alabama Christian Republican state leadership and members are proud of it.
5
Sanctioned state murder
5This is the best summary I could come up with:
Smith’s execution by “nitrogen hypoxia” took around 22 minutes, according to media witnesses, who were led into a viewing room at the William C Holman correctional facility in Atmore shortly before 8 pm local time.
He used sign language to say “I love you” to witnesses in the viewing room, and in his final statement he said: “Tonight, Alabama caused humanity to take a step backward.”
Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for Human Rights, said on Friday: “I deeply regret the execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith in Alabama despite serious concerns this novel and untested method of suffocation by nitrogen gas may amount to torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
“According to leading experts, this method is a particularly cruel and unusual punishment, in addition to the fact that the inmate was already subjected to a failed execution attempt in November 2022,” it said in a statement.
Bryan Stevenson, a well-known lawyer who has fought against the death penalty and founded the non-profit Equal Justice Initiative, also condemned Smith’s execution.
Kay Ivey, Alabama’s Republican governor, said the execution was “lawfully carried out by nitrogen hypoxia, the method previously requested by Mr Smith as an alternative to lethal injection”.
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