Attorneys for Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, filed an amended lawsuit challenging the proposed new execution method as a potential violation of the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. They asked a federal judge to issue a preliminary injunction to block the execution from going forward next year.
“There is sparse research on how long a human must be exposed to 100% pure nitrogen to cause death, what happens if a human is exposed to less than 100% pure nitrogen for a prolonged period of time, or on the pain or sensations that a human exposed to nitrogen might experience,” his attorneys wrote in the amended lawsuit filed Monday.
They noted in the filing that the American Veterinary Medical Association wrote in 2020 euthanasia guidelines that nitrogen hypoxia is an acceptable method of euthanasia for pigs but not other mammals because it could create an “anoxic environment that is distressing for some species.”
Nitrogen asphyxiation has been a favoured method with the euthanasia crowd for a while now. I'm against the death penalty, but it would be one of my top three preferred ways out if I was given the choice.
Nitrogen asphyxiation has been a favoured method with the euthanasia crowd for a while now. I’m against the death penalty, but it would be one of my top three preferred ways out if I was given the choice.
What are your other two?
Probably massive dose of heroin, or high explosive. But we all know #1 is snu snu.
Death by snu snu
Nitrogen is a good pick, though personally if I could pick anything it would be a double barrel point blank to the face. Partially because it's instantaneous, but mostly just to traumatize the executioner as I look him in the eye. I may not be evil, but I never said I was a good person.
Being exploded, your nerves can't act fast enough to notice. A high explosive attached to your head would be painless.
Alternatively, send me down in a shady submarine.
I've always thought a rocket-sled, where you are strapped on like superman, and accelerated head first into a concrete wall, would be a pretty fun suicide.
It's like a rollercoaster that ends in blank
Ya, I want to be "vanquished" like I was whipped by Simon, it seems quick and painless.
Suicide helmet. We all know the one I’m talking about.
That sounds simpler than my idea of firing squad with thousands of rifles could by a computer
wouldn't a good old firing squad do the same?
Fun fact! Inmates have stayed alive and conscious for over 10 seconds after being shot by the firing squad, it's an extremely painful, violent, and bloody execution method! A lot of the pain can come from shattered bones and spinal column damage which gets to your brain before shock and/or death can set in
Not unless they all point to your head.
I would like to be told that, "You're free to go, we've decided not to execute you", then spend the next day joyfully celebrating on rides at Disneyland, followed by being shot in the head by a professional hitman without my knowledge. If I have to be executed, at least I can die happy… Shame about spraying my blood over all those kids at Disneyland though.
I don't believe it's ever been a serious proposal, but I'd be ok with the rollercoaster of death
Or maybe an orgy of death
That's called Snu Snu, Sir.
NTA but my top three would be
hypoxia via inert gas
firing squad
hanging
The humiliation of spending my last few minutes on Earth strapped to a chair while my body is chemically forced to fall asleep and my muscles and heart stop is too dehumanizing and is a punishment in itself to me.
firing squad
hanging
We get it, you wanna suffer. Are you including acid in the eyes for your inert gas exposure?
TIL quick, painless, and assured death are suffering.
Pray tell, what methods do you think are more painless?
How is a firing squad quick or painless?
You are literally being shot and with the distance most likely not somewhere to be instant death. You lay on the ground and bleed to death whilst feeling the trauma and being aware of everything due to shock. Or worse you are bound to something and hang there like stuck pig until you bleed out in a couple of minutes. Maybe you'll get lucky and they hit a major artery, that way it only takes 30 secs to a minute.
It's not even assured, unless you count them coming over and shooting you again when the realize they fucked up 10 minutes later.
Hanging can be quick and painless, but only if done right. Hanging and asphyxiating is a slow and awful way to go. Back in the day it was used as a way to torture people to death, they would hang you by the neck from a tree whilst you are sat on a horse. Then the horse would be slapped so it ran away, leaving you swinging. An adult (especially a healthy muscular man/slave, which was the preferred target for this treatment) can hang from the neck a long time before dying, it is truly awful.
I believe the officer in charge of the firing squad has a pistol that they'll use to finish you off, but that's still not my definition of quick or painless.
For the record, I'm like 99% against the death penalty (I could be convinced if the crime was bad enough, the perpetrator was completely unrepentant and there was absolutely zero doubt of guilt, but that last one is a very high bar to clear), but can someone explain why instead of nitrogen, they don't use carbon dioxide? Doesn't that have a very similar "you fall asleep and never wake up" effect?
I think you're thinking of carbon monoxide. Carbon dioxide buildup in your lungs would be most unpleasant.
I guess that could work too though but it's a dangerous gas where nitrogen isn't.
Sure, our body has excess CO2 detectors. The feeling of not getting enough air usually has very little to do with not enough oxygen, because there is a lot of oxygen in the air, much more than we need. It's usually the excess CO2 detectors going off. This is also the reason we pant after holding our breath, the quick deep breaths help quickly lower the CO2 level.
For other gasses you are right. CO (Carbon monoxide) doesn't trigger our CO2 detectors, which is why you can die so easily due to a faulty heater or something like that. Killing yourself by running a car in the garage also kills using CO, the body does not notice, you fall asleep and die.
A lot of other gasses also displace oxygen, without our bodies knowing. For example argon or even natural gas (methane). This is where the putting your head in the oven thing comes from. Back in the day there was pure gas in the pipes, so gassing yourself this way was easy. These days they mix in a lot of other stuff so it doesn't work anymore.
The reason nitrogen is used is because it is cheap, easily available and non toxic. Regular air is almost all nitrogen, so the nitrogen itself isn't the dangerous part, the dangerous part is the lack of oxygen. Since CO2 is still exhaled, the detectors don't trigger and you die peacefully.
Mine would have explosives strapped to my head. You would not exist long before any pain could be registered.
Arguing his way into a more painful death
Every crack in the death penalty is another step towards abolishing the death penalty.
Agreed, my read of the quotes is that it's saying something like "you can't claim ANY execution method is humane because we don't research how people feel while we are killing them, so just stop."
For real. There is plenty of research on what death by hypoxia does to the human body. Nitrogen being an inert gas, the sentenced wouldn't feel anything different than breathing (notwithstanding their own anxiety). Lethal injection- muscle paralysis followed by heart failure - is the much more cruel execution method.
I think if the legal injection went exactly as planned, it would be painless. But that gets botched all the time.
Fun fact, this same inmate was spared last November because they couldn't find a vein. He's a prime candidate for lethal injection going wrong. It's part of the reason they wanted to use nitrogen toxicity.
Not toxicity, but asphyxiation. Nitrogen's harmless, but you need oxygen and will sleep fast if you don't get it.
States no longer have access to the drugs used in lethal injection because the suppliers didnt want to be associated with all that. IIRC one state tried their own cocktail of drugs recently and it went horribly wrong.
It goes exactly as planned. It's agony, and the prescribed under dosage of the anesthesia ensures it.
Exactly this. There is a lot of experimental and direct human knowledge of nitrogen asphyxiation.
The "anoxic environment distressing to some animals" is specific to rodentia or other creatures that have been exposed to anoxic environments in their evolutionary process.
Must animals use a buildup of waste products to sense a need for fresh air. But in an anoxic environment (like when breathing only nitrogen, or when breathing subterranean gases that have similarly supplanted oxygen), you still breathe out the waste products, so everything seems fine.
But since rodents live underground on a regular basis and have realistic probabilities of encountering low- or no-oxygen environments, they evolved the ability specifically to detect oxygen - that is, they evolved the ability to realoze there's no oxygen and freak out.
But for us, it's blissful sleep, possibly preceded by a case of the sillies.
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Not really, though. This is an area that is tested on a regular basis in humans. It's a normal part of air force pilot training to undergo hypoxia, precisely because it's something so difficult to recognize, and because people don't react to it - which could be deadly at hgh altitudes.
You could possibly make a case that for someone with COPD or who otherwise has had constantly elevated levels of carbon dioxide in their blood, where they may have adapted to using oxygen to drive the respiratory process. But in actual cases of acute hypoxia, people don't freak out, panic, or in most cases even become slightly uncomfortable. They go to sleep.
He’s trying to argue his way out of execution while appeals are being filed.
Smith’s initial conviction and death sentence was overturned on appeal. He was retried and convicted again in 1996, but the jury this time recommended a life sentence by a vote of 11-1. A judge overrode the recommendation and sentenced Smith to death. In 2017, Alabama became the last state to abolish the practice of letting judges override a jury’s sentencing recommendation in death penalty cases, but the change was not retroactive.
The laws changed to where he should be serving a life sentence, but they don’t apply to him because they changed after the bloodthirsty judge decided to kill him.
Regardless of my jokes, I think when we eat the rich in self-defense, we should avoid being sadistic about it and use the least distressing methods.
Let's eat them compassionately
I wholeheartedly agree. They should be euthanized quickly and painlessly.
This reminds me, we should put all fossil fuel supportive politicians and company executives in a garage without ventilation and cars running on idle
Bring back firing squads.
