Alabama, unless stopped by the courts, intends to strap Kenneth Eugene Smith to a gurney Thursday and use a gas mask to replace breathable air with nitrogen, depriving him of oxygen, in the nation’s first execution attempt with the method.
The Alabama attorney general’s office told federal appeals court judges last week that nitrogen hypoxia is “the most painless and humane method of execution known to man.” But what exactly Smith, 58, will feel after the warden switches on the gas is unknown, some doctors and critics say.
“What effect the condemned person will feel from the nitrogen gas itself, no one knows,” Dr. Jeffrey Keller, president of the American College of Correctional Physicians, wrote in an email. “This has never been done before. It is an experimental procedure.”
Keller, who was not involved in developing the Alabama protocol, said the plan is to “eliminate all of the oxygen from the air” that Smith is breathing by replacing it with nitrogen.
Okay, can someone explain to me why states with capital punishment don’t just inject someone with a bunch of morphine and they just go to sleep and never wake up again? I hear all the time about the horrific shit they inject into people and the horrible deaths they suffer, while one easy drug can execute the person with no fuss? I just don’t understand.
Drug companies refuse to supply states with execution medications. Not sure if it’s liability, legality or ethics (probably not the latter). I’d think states could synthesize their own or use drugs they confiscated, though.
Some of the drugs are not manufactured in the US. There has been an EU wide ban for selling drugs used in executions to the US without making sure they’re not used for executions. Which also is the reason why medical organizations were very unhappy few years ago when states lied to them in an attempt to get those drugs - as they risk getting cut off for legitimate medical use.
Reason for the EU ban is simple: We consider executions a human rights violation over here.
Or just shoot them, or decapitate them. We’ve known how to kill people for centuries, but “humane” here usually just means what’s prettiest to look at, not what kills the quickest or cleanest.
Morphine is considered a ‘fun’ drug, and they wouldn’t want to be giving prisoners that.