1y ago

Alabama inmate opposes being ‘test subject’ for new nitrogen execution method

apnews.com Alabama inmate opposes being 'test subject' for new nitrogen execution method

Attorneys for an inmate are asking the Alabama Supreme Court to reject the state's request to set an execution date for him using the new execution method of nitrogen hypoxia.

An Alabama inmate would be the test subject for the “experimental” execution method of nitrogen hypoxia, his lawyers argued, as they asked judges to deny the state’s request to carry out his death sentence using the new method.

In a Friday court filing, attorneys for Kenneth Eugene Smith asked the Alabama Supreme Court to reject the state attorney general’s request to set an execution date for Smith using the proposed new execution method. Nitrogen gas is authorized as an execution method in three states but it has never been used to put an inmate to death.

Smith’s attorneys argued the state has disclosed little information about how nitrogen executions would work, releasing only a redacted copy of the proposed protocol.

178 comments

We should not be executing anyone. Hypoxia is well documented so he would not exactly be a test subject.
- Note: if I were to commit medically induced suicide it would be by nitrogen hypoxia. By alla counts it is the best way to go.
  
  1000% and I hope to have the right to die via this method some day.
  
  What about n2o hypoxia?
  
  And alla is seldom wrong about these things
- The test is not of the efficacy of hypoxia, but of the state's competency.
  
  Going to guess it is significantly easier to be competent enough to kill someone with hypoxia rather than a cocktail of multiple constantly changing drugs administered by someone who had little training.

You know you live in a third world country if you have discussions about how to kill your citizens. There is no need for the death penalty but a twisted and false sense of justice.
- Apparently it's a hot take: there are people who exist that we would all absolutely be better off were they dead.
  This guy was someone who was paid to kill another person for a thousand dollars. This is not just "a citizen" unless you're saying it makes sense to keep people around in society that will fucking murder someone for less than a months pay.
  
  Counterpoint: Given the number of people in government who said government should murder me because of the rainbow pin on my lapel, I don't want government to have the power to murder anyone even if we all agree they deserve it. What makes you think that this is the one thing the government is competent at?
  
  I never said this is a person that society needs to keep around.
  I do not believe that living is a right that can be earned or unearned. It is a right everyone has. If a person is unfit for society they need to be seperated from society. If that means having them in prison for live than that is what we should do. Killing them is done for one purpose mainly: Because it gives some people a sense of justice. This sense of justice however is false as the only justice would be to undo what was done.
  
  That's what they say, even keeping him locked up for life would be cheaper. Also how do you decide what's gruesome enough to justify killing people, what about wrongfully convicted people they do exist and they got murdered. There are so many good arguments against and do few if any for the death penalty it's mind-blowing to me how any more or less democratic society doesn't abolish it.
  
  government shouldn't be allowed to kill its own people
  
  Even if you're right, that doesn't mean we should actually kill them. People are people, they should be treated as such. We can throw them in jail far easier, and to the rest of us, it's equivalent to them being dead.

America is so fucking stuck in stone age, it's schocking at times!

The state should never execute anyone because it implies two things that aren't true:
That the system is infallible.
That a person doesn't have the capacity to improve/rehabilitate.
That being said. I'll take this method over any other for sure.
- I absolutely agree with you in the first point, but I think there are cases where person really doesn't have the capacity, or we don't want to try it. I think of mass murderers or child murderers or something like that. People who are going to spend their whole life in jail with life-sentence with no way of ever getting out and who cost the state money and are the reason why some people want death sentence back in my country for example. The first point still applies however and there are cases of people getting out of jail after ten or fifteen years when new evidence is discovered.
- I agree with part 1, but the majority of people on death row do not deserve rehabilitation.
  
  That's pretty fucked up man.
  
  What about the fact that death penalties usually cost more than life sentences without parole?

It's way better than an electric chair.
- Moat likely, but since qualified people don't participate in executions it will probably end up being done wrong and he will suffocate to death with carbon dioxide and suffer horribly in a different way.
  
  Unlikely, unless the nitrogen flow rate is way too low. Even then, it would take a considerable amount of time.

This is interesting, and I personally feel he is fighting it only because it buys him more time. In a different article (linked in this one), where they announce Alabama's plan to use nitrogen it says:
Smith, in seeking to block the state’s second attempt to execute him by lethal injection, had argued that nitrogen should be available.
So he literally asked to use nitrogen, they said "ok" and now's he's saying "how dare you try to use me as a guinea pig"
- Shocking news: man on death row does not want to die.
  More at 11.
- "I think something should be available" is not the same as "I volunteer to test it out".
  For example, I think ejection seats should be available on all fighter jets.
  
  The correct analogy would be you refusing to get out of a fighter jet except via ejection seats, them refusing to be ejected lol. This guy apparently wasn't saying it should be available in general but that it should be an option for him.
  That said, I am in principle against executions.
  
  Fair point!
- If you think his inconsistent argument is ridiculous, you don't understand the legal system. It's okay, that's why there are lawyers. (1) Alternate pleading is a thing, (2) the State pulls the same shit except 1000% worse, (3) the judiciary, especially the GOP judiciary that is elected on a "tough on crime" platform (got to love politicized justice), is ABSOLUTELY the most inconsistent, as their goal is to accept any argument of the State that leads to speedy execution. It goes all the way up to the SCOTUS - former Chief Justice Rehnquist was absolutely a shining star of the death machine, regardless of actual innocence. EDIT: the thing that really pisses me off is when the media covers alternate pleading without context. It's terribly biased reporting designed to give people justice boners and pump up support for the State. EDIT2: I might be slightly off with my terms of art - I'm in transactional law, not criminal law, and it's been a hell of a long time since law school or anything involving criminal law beyond a traffic ticket.

I support giving convicts with death sentences the right to choose the means (within reason). Nitrogen hypoxia is probably more humane than most of the methods we've tried, although I personally prefer bringing back the guillotine. If we're willing to kill a man for justice, we ought be willing to reject childish euphemisms (putting him to sleep) and make a bloody mess of it.
- make a bloody mess of it
  Personally I've been advocating for the "shitload of explosives" method. It doesn't get much more humane than being blown to a red mist in milliseconds, and the audience would love it.
  Medicalized death sentences like the lethal injection seriously creep me out. Even a murderer deserves to face death with dignity, not strapped to a table and injected with poison.

Alabama really shows itself to be one of the most savage states when it comes to their treatment of prisoners. Fucking monsters.
- And may the head worthless POS of there burn in hell with abott and the other worthless shiteheads

A glib reply would be "What's the worst that could happen?, they'd die?" but a far worse outcome is that they remain conscious but in constant pain for an unnecessarily long time. I'm personally against execution of any form but if it's going to be done let's make sure it's humane.
- well what you describe is how Normal executions go. Doctors won't do it so it's done by prison guards with no medical training and is often so disgusting the witnesses need counseling

I'll take it if he doesn't want it.
- I was gonna say they could test on me, but I don't want to support the death penalty.
  
  Unless they're pedophiles!
- Right? Why aren't suicide booths a thing yet?
  The capitalist owners could make more profit off it, and that's literally all human civilization values. And bonus, the people the Capitalists and their doting peasant sycophants consider "lazy, socialist commies" would largely opt out, leaving them to count their shillings in peace, unopposed.
  Is it about needing a homeless population that can't (easily) opt out to scare the other peasants into continuing to show up for their purposeless jobs? Or just the last thin fig leaf of the capitalists deluding themselves into believing themselves less than monstrous?
  Because being trapped in this labor camp of a civilization isn't mercy. It's the opposite of mercy. Not legalizing escape isn't the same thing as valuing life, and we clearly don't. It's the same thing as an anti-abortionist claiming to value human life while opposing social programs to help the newborn and mother.
  
  Capitalists make portable suicide booths called guns! They love them

Last time a new method of execution was made, lethal injection, it was developed by a veterinarian who vaguely described how it might work and then it was administered by non-physicians because no doctor would ever touch this. I wonder who developed this new method.
- Actually it's pretty well understood.
  The human body reacts to CO2 buildup with a 'gasping for air' sensation. Nitrogen however, not at all. The air we breathe is 80% nitrogen 20% oxygen, so we aren't sensitive to nitrogen at all. Breathing air with little oxygen is something well understood as it can happen to pilots of unpressurized aircraft. Here's a funny example of what happens when pressurization fails. Once ATC figures out he has hypoxia, they order him to descend to 11,000' (which is usually the point hypoxia starts to kick in) and he's fine. But while he's hypoxic, he happily admits he has no control over his airplane and is totally unbothered by that fact.
  There's a thing called a hypoxia chamber- the oxygen % of the air is reduced (not eliminated) to simulate what it's like being at high altitude without pressurization. Always funny videos there, grown men with oxygen-starved brains playing with a children's puzzle trying to put the square block in the round hole.
  Execution by 100% nitrogen is the most humane death I can think of. The gas is odorless, and as it takes effect the prisoner would experience a euphoric feeling before just falling asleep and dying a few minutes later.
  That said, I'm sure they'll fuck this up somehow- most civilized people have concluded that execution is barbaric and unnecessary, so whoever builds the nitrogen gadget is probably not going to be the sharpest tool in the shed.
  And that's what a botched execution would look like- if you shut off the nitrogen too soon or don't ensure a high enough nitrogen concentration, the prisoner will be left with brain damage but not dead.
- I saw a video, I think on YouTube shorts, explaining how our bodies response when suffocating is from an abundance of CO2 rather than a lack of O2.
  Maybe whoever suggested this method saw the same video?

My position: no government should be given the power to kill its citizens under any other circumstances than to protect other people from imminent violence, i.e. the same circumstances that would qualify as self-defence by a private individual.
For the sake of argument: if you really wanted a painless and humane death what could be better than a carefully modulated dose of opioids?
I'm guessing the answer is if they get high on the way out then it isn't justice because only fear and suffering will assuage those with a vengeance boner.
- No, it's because opioids aren't 100% effective at a painless death either. At this stage, no death we know of is truly "painless". Well, that we can prove anyway. They've had patients hooked to brain monitors when they've died in their sleep, the brain goes through severe stress at the moment of death. Drowning is meant to be okay, but for obvious reasons, we can't prove that.
  
  There's no way drowning is the way to do it... There's a reason waterboarding is an "effective" means of torture.

Nitrogen Execution?
They're gonna freeze him and ~~strike~~ tap him with a ~~baseball bat~~ hammer?
Then deploy a bunch of Roombas to clean up the human icicle shards?
- That would be the liquid nitrogen execution.
- Jokes on them when the shards melt, and begin to reform, to continue his inexorable pursuit of John Connor
- They're going to freeze him, and then John Spartan will summarily execute him in a politically correct fascist regime in the future lol
- That’s liquid nitrogen, bro. This is nitrogen gas which in a confined space will consume all of the available oxygen and thus induce asphyxiation (suffocation).
  Some might even consider this a kink 👀👀
  
  It doesn't consume oxygen. Gaseous nitrogen is very stable.
  However, if there is a higher concentration of nitrogen than there should be, then you take in proportionally less oxygen in each breath.

i could never live with myself if i put anyone to death, regardless of how horrific an act they committed.

What an idiot, he's just turned down the most humane and painless way to go. You don't notice nitrogen suffocation, because your body ignores nitrogen in the air and determines you're suffocating by a build up in CO2. Instead, you pass out in blissful hypoxia.
I'm against the death penalty as a rule of thumb, but if you have to do it then it should only be done via nitrogen suffocation. Anything else is just a refelction of the vindictiveness of the people administering or pushing for the punishment - it doesn't achieve anything, it doesn't deter future crime, it's just you getting your own back and trying to say it's ok to harm others in this instance. If the goal is to remove them from society such that they don't harm or cost society anymore, then this should be done without the kind of harmful intent that the criminal themselves demonstrated.
Tbh though I imagine this is just the guy's lawyer trying to do anything he can to delay the execution. There's some small chance that the state could do something wrong during the hearings that leads to some benefit for the prisoner. However I can only imagine the regret the prisoner might feel as he's on the receiving ends of one of the other methods.
- How the latest execution method is always humane, while the last one was barbaric:
  
  Yeah the difference is this method is actually promoted by the scientific community, rather than commercial interests. Nitrogen suffocation is used for assisted suicide.
  I just wish we'd use it for pork. However because it's so hazardous to humans (boiling nitrogen releases gas that expands very quickly and expells all the oxygen in the room) we just stick with CO2, which is very easy because it's heavier than air so you just have walkways to protect the people. With nitrogen, they'd require much more expensive safety measures to protect people working nearby. Also, CO2 causes a feeling of suffocation, leading to the pig lashing about and suffering, and possibly spoiling the meat somewhat.
  Electrocution is perhaps the worst. They actually limit the current, meaning it kills you a little more slowly or maybe not at all, because if they went full power they would literally cook the person and that would smell unpleasant for everyone else. Lethal injections aren't much better, typically they paralyse the person first so they can feel themselves dying but not move to show any sign of it.
  I'm certainly keen to learn of any further downsides to nitrogen, but as far as I'm aware it's the best thing going (out of a horrible bunch of ways to kill). Like I said before, I'm against the death penalty as a rule, but if you're going to do it then it should be as painless as possible.

Why people are so obsessed with finding more and more intricate ways to execute? Hanging or shooting in the head works just fine.
- Those are not painless methods and they hearken to a sense of vengeance, not justice. If someone is truly so irredeemable that we cannot re-educate them to learn to be good citizens or at least non-offending citizens, then we should remove them from the ability to cause further harm. But we are not in the business of causing suffering, at least not on paper we're not. So we should give the person a civilized death with no pain, as causing pain is not justice, it's vengeance.
  
  Why execute them then? We clearly have no issue incarcerating people for life.
  
  The death penalty is already about vengeance and not justice. Removing them from society completely is justice for harming society.
  
  But I'm all in agreement when it comes to reducing the cost. I don't love the death penalty, I think it should be reserved for absolutely impossible cases, but it should be cheaper.
- This isn't more intricate, it's significantly more efficient and foolproof. There are so many ways that hanging someone or shooting them can go wrong, it's unnecessarily complicated.

I don't know much about asphyxiation but it does not sound comfortable. Concerning lethal injection, it's not certain how much pain the paralyzed body feels as the heart is being stopped – have there been EEG studies?
I would prefer execution by firing squad.
- The human body can only detect a buildup of carbon dioxide in the lungs, not a lack of oxygen. This is why it's uncomfortable to hold your breath for a long time. If you inhale pure nitrogen while being able to exhale, there is no build up of CO2 and therefore little to no discomfort.
  Wikipedia cites a USAF text, saying: "Some individuals experience headache, dizziness, fatigue, nausea and euphoria, and some become unconscious without warning."
  
  This is why it's uncomfortable to hold your breath for a long time.
  If you want to try it at home, try inhaling the air inside a soda bottle
- It's supposed to be very painless. If I remember correctly your body can't tell the difference between oxygen and nitrogen so you don't have a feeling of lack of air, just continue breathing normally then fall asleep and expire.
  
  Generally, the build up of CO2 is what triggers pain and panic of asphyxiation. Oxygen displacing gases certainly do cause fast unconsciousness and brain damage. Would seem very likely that nitrogen works well.
- There's plenty of knowledge about the effects of nitrogen from it being a workplace hazard in a lot of places.
  One example is anchor chain lockers on ships. That big iron chain that just came out of the salt water wants to turn into iron oxide so it absorbs all the oxygen making the environment extremely nitrogen rich. In several cases people have been climbing down into it and without warning go unconscious. I think one case had three dead at the bottom before the fourth guy comes along with some brains and thinks maybe I shouldn't go down there.
- have there been EEG studies?
  there have and it's horrendous.
  In any case, displacing oxygen with nitrogen is one of those things that you'd never notice until it was too late. because your body bases it's breathing off how much air your sucking in, you don't even start hyper ventilating.

So put a bullet in his head and call it a day. Enough with this bullshit.
- Seriously, who gives a fuck about boring legal motions when we're about to give the blood god his due?!
  Sacrifice! Sacrifice!
  We're so fuckin' horny for it!!
  
  Skulls for the Skull Throne!
  
  This comment was funny but your argument with this guy became kinda dumb.
  This dude forfeited his life for crimes he absolutely unequivocally committed. How he is killed, he has no right to decide. We the people do. Original commenter dude has a rough take but it isn't that cruel, fuck murderers they're fortunate we the people dislike violence and actively seek humane executions.
  
  Make sure the pentagram is nice and even. Remember, the inside angle is 36 degrees.
  Even those who defend murderers should learn to use a straight-edge and compass.
- the state should just execute everyone who says it's okay for the state to execute someone

178 comments