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.
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.
breathtaking
Heh
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
Yep, NO. I’ve tried it. You can’t get a breath and you feel like you’re suffocating.
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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!
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.
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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.
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.
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 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.
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)
Sure, Jan.
That’s not the case with nitrogen asphyxiation.
Pro Life™️
Yeah, that’s a lie, always has been.
And here I am on Life Lite like a pleb.
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.
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.
Small government folks sure are horny about giving their government the power to murder them.
Actually the (small L) libertarians are a little split on this issue, with most seeming to agree with me that the death penalty is a stupid fucking idea from multiple standpoints. Can’t trust the govt to get a damn thing right and that is no-take-backsies so no room for fuck ups (which they definitely have fucked up and killed innocent people, only to learn someone lied after it is too latw.)
OH you meant the republicans, who say “small government” but then through their actions prove they are just “the other side” of “big government” from the dems. Well, they’re “lying” in order to manipulate people into voting for them (tbf, I know that’s how they all get votes).
Sure, but as long as they have the death penalty, it’s probably best they do it as humanely as possible.
Some states are bringing back firing squads, which definitely feels like a huge step back. If they’re going to kill someone, using an actual painless option instead of lethal injection or shooting them seems like as much of a step forward as we can get up to actually not executing people.
Yep. Which is how we end up building FUCKING concentration camps in the country and pave that road for a dictatorship to take over one of, if not the, leading super powers of the world.
This shit needs to stop and we need to address what is happening in the south before we start having some repeats that end in mass death. Enough is enough.
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?
He means die. People use lots of euphemisms when talking about death. This is one of them.
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.
That makes sense, thank you
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.
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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.
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.
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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
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.
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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.
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!
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.
Unless you have COPD. That’s why’s it’s dangerous to give high flow O2 to people with COPD.
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.
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Have you been to America lately?
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Born and raised in Indiana. Live in Terre Haute, where the federal prison where they execute inmates is located.
It’s Alabama…
They are, that’s just the truth.
Well, in Alabama and in in some states (cough, Texas) they probably are I’m afraid.
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
Not going out on a morphine high?
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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.
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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”.
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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.
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!
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.
Because the people selling it don’t want to deal with the association with lethal injections
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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Manson and his cronies did not exactly die in obscurity. They had, and still have, groupies.
Let him rot in prison.
ABOLISH CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
That’s how it should be. But as with most things, it comes down to money. It’s cheaper to execute.
It’s really not cheaper in practice, the legal hurdles for the death penalty are more expensive to overcome than just keeping someone locked up for life.
It might get cheaper if you’re executing in volume, like thousands of people, but then we’d be looking at a whole other sort of problems (like “how did we turn into China?”)
It’s not cheaper to execute. It’s financially and morally very expensive.
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The justice system isn’t perfect and you can’t roll back dying
Sure sure, but the comment above wanted the person to rot in jail for the rest of their existence. Which is why I mentioned a very specified a situation where the crime is clear.
You’re arguing for cases where an innocent person may be found guilty - which is a very valid argument. I’m trying to figure out this crowd that wants people to suffer forever while they won’t even think of that person again in their life, besides maybe pay taxes to keep them alive.
to rot in jail for the rest of their existence
Because later on, if they were found to be actually innocent - the person rotting in jail can be released and compensated (to whatever extent false imprisonment can be compensated).
If they were executed, it’s over. The injustice can’t be remediated in any way.
assuming the person is truly guilty
That’s the part where it falls to bits for me.
Although you could allow people to choose euthanasia. Although even there it should be carried out privately rather than some ghoulish ceremony.
Bring back the gladiator fights! I want sand, blood, and tigers!
All you have to do is look at the times the government has got it wrong on convictions of people who turned out innocent to realize maybe the government shouldn’t make the decision to kill people.
Look up the innocence project.
Capital punishment is government sanctioned killing. Outside of war, the government should not have the power to kill anyone.
For these people, death is also the easy way out. Prison time is harder.
Not to mention cost. The complexity, finality, and litigation drive cost through the roof and make it much more expensive than life in prison.
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, 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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“Smith was one of two men paid $1,000 each to murder Elizabeth Sennett on behalf of her preacher husband, Charles Sennett Sr., who was in debt and wanted to collect life insurance money.”
Hold on, so why is he being executed? He wasn’t the one who ordered the murder. It seems like lots of other people request murders but those people aren’t sentenced to death.
Because he accepted money in exchange to brutally beat and stabbed a person to death. “Just following orders,” has never been an acceptable excuse for an individual to commit a crime, but especially when it’s not an order in a military hierarchy, it’s payment and a voluntary agreement. Fuck him.
Sennet Sr. committed suicide the moment the police started to investigate him. That’s why he’s not about to be executed.
I don’t think that was the argument being made. The argument, to me, is why sentenced to death instead of some other sentence. And, were the others that are also part of this crime sentenced.
The article doesn’t seem to say anything about what happened to the others that are involved. Focused a lot on the execution method.
Sounds like the guy just did this for the money so I also don’t understand why he’s being sentenced to death. Should just be prison time. But, I don’t have all the facts here.
He’s sentenced to death because he committed a capital murder in a state with the death penalty and a jury found him guilty. “I did it for money” is not exactly a legal defense. An innocent person was still killed, and arguably doing it for money is worse. Fuck him.
The other guy involved in the killing has already been executed, over ten years ago. It’s a well documented case and took me about a minute of Googling to figure out this guy isn’t particularly being singled out for death and the other got a lighter sentence.
I personally don’t believe in the death penalty, but also if he didn’t want to be executed for murder, he shouldn’t have committed murder in the deep south.
“Preacher.”
Right, bro is just caught up in the rat race same as the rest of us
To be very, very clear, I do not support the death penalty but the rat race isn’t an excuse to kill someone.
I don’t think he was trying to find excuses.
