I’d like to wonder how Nitrogen Asphyxiation, which I know from my LN2 safety training is extremely dangerous due solely to the fact humans can’t tell it’s happening until they faint and die, can’t be used because it’s inhumane and dangerous, yet lethal injections, electric chairs, and toxic chambers are perfectly fine to use.
I don’t support the death penalty/capital punishment, but if the punishment is the death itself, torturing prisoners is plain unnecessary
It’s prolly the most humane form of execution and prolly companies that supply lethal injection that are kicking up a fuss. If I had to choose a way to go, nitrogen all the way.
All those companies refuse to make the “medicines” used in it, actually. In this rare instance, the private sector pushed back and effectively ended lethal injection as an option.
Hence AL looking elsewhere.
I’m with you guys tho, N asphyxiation is peaceful…but as we all know, the cruelty is inherent and fundamental to capitalism. Hence the propaganda campaigns.
Dunno anyone killing me against my wishes, peaceful or not, seems like cruelty.
The cruelty standard in this case applies to the method not the punishment.
It’s literally the way I choose to die.
Chased off a cliff by lacrosse players?
Having your nuts bit off by a Laplander, that’s the way I wanna go.
Well death by snu snu is my PREFERRED way. Nitrogen asphyxiation would be a distant second but highly preferred to any of the others mentioned.
So, the Swiss suicide pod lets you kill yourself with nitrogen gas, and apparently that’s absolutely fine and painless.
Alabama thinks about using nitrogen gas, and it’s cruel and unusual?
WTF am I missing here? Or is it all just the BS hyperbole of US politics?
Well clearly the difference is the Swiss suicide pod is for suicide, and in Alabama it is state-sanctioned murder.
I can understand disagreeing about the death penalty but the difference between choosing to do this to yourself vs it being done to you regardless of your feelings is a dramatic difference, is it not?
You’re forgetting that this person is going to die by the State’s hand regardless of the method. Given that, how is nitrogen asphyxiation more cruel than lethal injection?
I’m not condoning the death penalty, just confused why someone would say nitrogen asphyxiation is cruel and unusual when in another context it’s desirable.
I’m not forgetting that, not really. I was just breaking down the comparison between assisted suicide and the death penalty.
I’m against the death penalty but if we are going down that route nitrogen hypoxia seems the sanest and safest way to me.
First off, I’m 100% against the death penalty, this is only an argument of pragmatism. Nitrogen is by far the most simple and humane method at the states disposal to perform executions. The rapid hypoxia will leave the victim unconscious within a minute and death will happen shortly after. It requires minimal equipment and essentially no training to be effective with this method. People who perform lethal injections receive no training and fuck it up way too much for it to be considered safe. If the state is going to execute people (which they shouldn’t) they should seek to limit the amount of suffering and margin for error and inert gas asphyxiation is a good choice for both of those. If they wanted to make us easier on the victim they should consider giving them an oral sedative like versed shortly before the execution. Regardless, they’ll be out in under a minute so it still minimizes pain and suffering
Yup I agree. We don’t refer to certain suicides as “cruel and unusual”.
That’s because suicides aren’t a method. Stabbing is.
Fair
They are, however, illegal in Alabama.
The authors argue:
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Nitrogen execution forces prisoners to participate in their own death, which they consider cruel
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Delivery by mask is unproven and could lead to problems (like CO2 buildup).
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the protocol is heavily redacted and many other executions have been botched before, which does not inspire confidence.
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a lack of oxygen can lead to convulsions, which can prolong the execution if the airways are affected
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in case of a failed execution the prisoner is entitled to medical help. This could be difficult or even dangerous to administer in an environment of little to no oxygen
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mice did show a fear response when executed with nitrogen
While I do agree with those points and oppose lethal punishment myself, I would not expect the arguments to make a big legal difference. All of them do apply to other execution methods as well, and usually much worse. Personally, I would prefer a death by nitrogen to any other method on offer, if there is to be an execution.
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When you call things whatever you want, you open the door to abusing the law however you like!
Alabama people against it are just retarded is what you’re missing. It’s probably the most peaceful way to kill someone. No taste, no needles, bullets, or guillotine. You just get sleepy and that’s it.
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My God this article is full of stupid, awful arguments. Seriously some sort of agenda behind it. I hate the death penalty. However, if they’re going to do it anyway, nitrogen hypoxia is definitely the most humane method.
in my opinion - and I’m just some guy - there is no humane way to kill anyone who doesn’t want to die. It is a contradiction in terms. Therefore regardless of the method, it is simply “not humane.”
Fine, then the authors should argue that, honestly, instead of arguing against the particular method and thus dishonestly implying there’s some other method they would find acceptable. It’s a bad-faith “control the conversation” tactic that has no place in legitimate journalism.
They do (in general) argue against that in the first and last paragraphs of the article where they list (separately) themselves as abolitionists. I believe we can take that as read.
Agreed. I should have specified “more humane than other methods”.
I’d argue that waiting 80-100 years is much more humane and just as effective
Air forces around the world use nitrogen inhalation to simulate the effects of hypoxia caused by high altitude decompression for training.
From that we know for a fact that it is absolutely painless all the way to loss of consciousness.
We also know that it is perfectly safe to have people in the same room who do not participate in the exercise.
And we also know that you don’t need a perfectly fitting mask if the had mixture is supplied in it at positive pressure.
The author is reaching at straws for arguments so he makes them up. He’s imagining possible problems or downsides and calls them as immediately disqualifying without ever bothering to look for their validity or solutions.
I’m against capital punishment. But if it has to be done this seems to be the least cruel method to do it by far.
it’s hard to imagine complications with electricity or lethal injection as we all have electricity in our houses, and administer injections hundreds of times per second across developed countries - and yet a significant amount of times either are used in the rare cases of execution they are bungled causing distress, pain and delayed death of the condemned person to both the victim, the executioner and the witnesses.
It isn’t hard to imagine complications with electricity or lethal injection at all though?
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Is he arguing that this is cruel and unusual punishment because they have to continue breathing? Otherwise they will feel the CO2 build-up if they hold their breath. I’m sorry, but if capital punishment has to be a thing, I’ll take Nitrogen poisoning over any current method.
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A little? If I’m going out, might as well go out with all the opioids.
Actually, why aren’t opioids used for lethal injections? IV overdose of heroin/fentanyl is well known to cause death, and going out that way wouldn’t be nearly as painful as the current triple drug mix.
Just use an ungodly amount of carfentanil.
I don’t know the actual answer, but here are the excuses that I get when I have asked this question previously.
- People have different tolerances and you can’t be sure the dose will kill them
- Some people may vomit while dying and may suffocate on the vomit during the event
- The people who manufacture legal Fentanyl don’t want to sell it for the death penalty.
These sound like some pretty silly excuses, but I am just a layman. I fail to see why the federal government couldn’t test confiscated Fentanyl until they find something pure and resell it to the states for this purpose.
I’m torn about this. I’m against execution in any event, but the idea that this is somehow worse than other methods is a silly proposition. Good job on the article author for making it sound as awful as possible, but there’s a lot made of small things that are by and large better than other techniques that are considered constitutional. I strongly feel like this is more about preventing this particular execution than making sure the best method possible is used.
And that’s great. This execution should be stopped, but since it’s legal for now it would be a shame for this one case to deny this method to other prisoners who would otherwise be subject to lethal injection or electrocution, both of which are far worse.
I’m against capital punishment as well, but this is how I’d plan to go out.
The author’s argument actually seems pretry flimsy to me. If the issue is that it’s cruel to make a prisoner an active participant in their own execution, you could easily resolve that by putting them to sleep before applying the nitrogen. Breathing is only voluntary as long as you’re awake; once you’re asleep, you’re no more in control of breathing the nitrogen as you are in control of your heart pumping a lethal injection throughout your body.
Absolutely, the argument is crap, but they do a really good job of framing it to sound awful. Like, you die of suffocation. The nitrogen is harmless and breathing it makes you more comfortable. They make it sound like people are going to harm themselves by holding their breath to keep the deadly stuff out of their lungs, but it’s harmless and they don’t live any longer by not breathing it, so all they are doing by holding their breath is to make the experience more miserable.
But the article careful tiptoes around anything that doesn’t serve the narrative. So they did a good job at propaganda, but an awful job at journalism.
If you read this article, start from the halfway point. The first half is absolute fluff.
Arguments against:
- The executed needs to breathe. Author believes this will cause stress as they may attempt to hold their breath.
- An ill fitted mask for nitrogen delivery may be a safety concern for occupants in the same room. Article did not have details on how much nitrogen is delivered or how much would be need to impact a small room.
- if an execution fails, first responders may have difficulty treating the patient due to the prevalence of nitrogen gas.
- When terminated by nitrogen, a study found mice elicit a fear response indicating that more research is needed before using this as an ethical means of terminating mice… or people.
Author also argues that since other states don’t use this method, it shouldn’t be used… which feels more like a chicken and egg problem.
The thing is, we already know exactly how nitrogen affects humans, and we know due to industrial accidents.
I’ll preface this next part by saying that I don’t think the death penalty should exist at all, and that when you give the State the power to kill, that power will be abused.
So, addressing the author’s “concerns”;
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You can only hold your breath for so long. The stress of doing so would be no worse than the stress of knowing you’re being executed. You can make the exact same stress argument about any form of execution.
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Ill fitting masks are a concern, but nitrogen by itself is not a concern in a well ventilated room. The prisoner dies, not because of the nitrogen itself, but because the nitrogen displaces oxygen. Normal air is about 78% nitrogen. Any other concerns can be alleviated by having oxygen sensors in the room.
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Saving someone from nitrogen hypoxia is actually pretty easy if you get to them quickly. And again, a well ventilated room means that it will be completely safe for everyone (except the guy wearing the mask)
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Mice are not humans. Humans cannot tell when there’s more nitrogen than there should be. That’s why nitrogen is so dangerous in an industrial setting.
Basically, the author comes off as having failed every basic science class they ever took.
I don’t know enough about the finer details of this topic to say what is right or wrong, but I was hoping to be educated by the article… which felt like it was just thrown together without proper due diligence… or editing.
Yeah, the author seems to be a complete dipshit.
Yes, you can argue that the death penalty is bad. I often do just that.
I don’t make up bullshit that’s so easy to disprove in order to push my point.
The author is doing more harm than good here.
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I guess my biggest question is if this only works well with someone who cooperates, why are they not allowed to put the person under with anesthesia first, then administer nitrogen as part 2?
Anesthesia needs a highly skilled resource to apply it correctly, and most of them refuse to be involved in an execution, for obvious reasons. This is one of the major cause of errors in lethal injection executions.
What ridiculous reasoning! They are required to participate … by breathing normally? Year somehow participating by your heart beating is ok?
They are against it because they don’t want to set a precedent allowing it. Death penalty opponents have come as close as they ever have at abolishing it by lobbying drug makers to stop providing standard drugs. Nitrogen gas, however, is cheap and easy to obtain. Right now the only argument against it is that it’s “experimental” (despite plenty of accidental deaths providing ample data), but once successfully used, that argument is gone.
I cannot believe we still have the death penalty. Crazy.
“We can’t use nitrogen! Lethal injection and the gas chamber and electric chair are all way worse and more painful, like to the point of excruciating torture, and nitrogen is painless, but I just don’t like nitrogen!”
“We can’t vote for Biden! Look at all the…”
I see a pattern.
(Yes I know Biden’s not “painless,” it’s a flawed analogy a little bit)
It’s cruel to all of us who just wanna profit from their suffering!
It’s the only way I can achieve a full profit; it’s causin’ problems with Alice and me
There’s nothing cruel about nitrogen hypoxya death, it’s one the most peaceful ways to die actually.
Just fucking shoot them, what is with these money wasting assholes?
Don’t kill them at all, because at least 4% of them are completely innocent.
An error rate that large is just insane.
When you add in the non-death row cases, that number is actually larger. Because our criminal punishment system needs massive reform. I do not call it a justice system, because there is no justice in it.
Refer to my reply to the other guy, I mentioned this and agree with you.
We should be furthering financing of better investigations into people that go to prison or death row and just shooting the people that do deserve it.
Except no.
We should not give the government the power to kill at all. If you let the government kill people, that power will be abused.
“For social order we need tighter reigns! Incarceration hasn’t worked as a deterrent, I say we expand execution to include lesser crimes!” - Chief Judge Griffin, Judge Dredd (1995)
The government already has the power to kill people, what do you think happens in a war? The only difference is that they’re not killing their own citizens.
Yes, that’s the power that needs to be stripped away.
The government should not have the power to kill its own citizens, not under any circumstances. This includes police. They should face actual, external investigation for every bullet fired, and if they kill, that’s it. They’re not a cop anymore. If the death was justified (a big ask) they can get free retraining and a small stipend for a few years. If not, they get a full trial for murder.
All deaths in prison should also get a full investigation, with murder charges possible.
All power is abused because humans are human. Pretending like it’s an issue of government and not of human nature is hilarious
It is an issue of human nature.
But the point is, don’t give out a power that will be abused. It’s that fucking simple.
Do not give the government the power to kill its own citizens, and the government will stop abusing that power. I don’t know why this is a hard concept to understand.
