You must log in or # to comment.
Richest 3rd world country
Civilized countries don’t execute criminals and somehow don’t experience more criminality or unacceptably high incarceration costs as a result. Capital punishment is an outdated cultural practice like slavery, genital mutilation or child brides and has nothing to do with the administration of justice. It is cultural and nothing else. They like the killing. They believe in the killing. It has no other purpose.
I don’t know why much of the discussion is about the method of execution. Would it matter how they were fucking kids or beating slaves in Alabama or that they were doing those things at all? State executions are barbaric and indefensible in any form.
Rev. Jeff Hood, Smith’s spiritual adviser, was at Smith’s side for the execution, and said prison officials in the room “were visibly surprised at how bad this thing went.” “What we saw was minutes of someone struggling for their life,” Hood, attending his fifth execution in the last 15 months, told reporters. “We saw minutes of someone heaving back and forth. We saw spit. We saw all sorts of stuff from his mouth develop on the mask. We saw this mask tied to the gurney, and him ripping his head forward over and over and over again.”
All our technological advances as a society and this is the best we can do?
Everyone who would actually know what they are doing in executions (doctors, pharmaceutical companies, veteranarians) have looked at it and said “this is barbaric in concept, no matter how humanely you do it, we will have no part in it”. What you are left with is people without the relevent expertise, who do not have a problem with the barbarism, figuring out how to do it.
I also read that they starved him first so he won’t choke on the food if he vomits it out.
State sanctioned murder with torture included for free. They did it the conservative Christian way…
The good 'ol American tradition. Put 'em a dry sponge on the head and let them ride the lightning. Undoes every crime and makes murder victims alive again.
A fallible state institution that has made many documented mistakes in the past is still given the power to murder prisoners who are in its custody and under its protection. It’s barbarous.
America is hellbent on the concept of punishing criminals over rehabilitation while also having an objectively unfair justice system. The cruelty is the point sometimes, and it’s very unfortunate that people still think this way.
The Lethal Injection idea was from interviewing a veterinarian who of course refused to implement it, as did every Medical Doctor in the USA because of fucking course nobody would touch breaking the oath in such a way with a ten foot pole. The result is a bunch of untrained amateurs carrying out the procedures and an extremely low success rate leading to unjust and unnecessary pain and trauma.
I imagine all the other methods they come up with to follow a similar series of events.
Thank you for stating the truth. I live in USA, and it hurts.
.
so cheap
“We’re giving out longer prison sentences and cutting taxes and budgets, make it work.” - Red state legislatures every two years
32 minutes. Huh.
That is a long time to know someone is murdering you.
Weird stuff, Americans
I dont support the death penalty in any way (well, maybe guillotine)
Its the vengeful right wing christofascists that love it. Unfortunately, they are overrepresented in our governments.
Guillotine is almost certainly worse than hypoxia; having nerves severed is agonizing. Having almost all of them severed would be insanely painful.
That said, what if we just didn’t kill people. That would be cool.
If the nerves connected to the brain are severed, how can someone even know they’re in pain? (Also, they die immediately.)
FYI, they were making a joke about complacent, exploitative rich people, e.g. the French Revolution.
“Immediately” is 4-10 seconds.
I think the sudden blood pressure going to zero would probably end conscious awareness fairly quick
“fairly quick” is 4 to 10 seconds.
I bet you could recite the whole alphabet in that amount of time
In November 2022, Alabama officials aborted his execution by lethal injection after struggling for hours to insert an intravenous line’s needle in his body.
In Smith’s second and final trip to the execution chamber on Thursday, executioners restrained him in a gurney and strapped a commercial industrial-safety respirator mask to his face. A canister of pure nitrogen was attached to the mask
This doesn’t sound very professional!?
Someone else mentioned in another comment here that medical professionals can’t purposely kill someone because of their oath, so I’m guessing the people administering these execution methods are literally unqualified to do them.
I’d argue that a doctor would also be unqualified, since their entire qualification revolves around not killing people.
But yeah, one major problem with the death penalty is that it is carried out by people who have no education or training in that matter.
No one goes to school to learn the trade of an executioner.
Professionals won’t participate because that’d break their hippocratic oath. That just leaves schmucks like me and you to try to figure it out.
I don’t see why they do any method other than a bullet or the lance gun thing they use to kill cows/sheep/etc by launching a spike into the brain. Surely that’s the quickest and painless method right?
Have you seen the way animals are slaughtered?
I’m going to follow this advice
Quickest route to becoming vegan is discovering the cruelty done in your name.
yea I’ve done this before but couldn’t handle it, too intense for me
When it comes to mixed bag news this is as mixed as it gets. If we’re gonna execute people, we can at least do it as humanely as possible.
One of my state senators introduced a bill that’d let inmates choose execution by a firing squad made up of members of the legislature. Like ‘If you want to kill them so bad, you pull the damn trigger.’
Isn’t going anywhere but I like the sentiment. Real Ned Stark energy.
While that “sounds” good in theory. Many gun nut conservatives (of which many of the legislators come from) would actually welcome the chance to kill another human without representations…
Just the pro life crowd being inhumane. Nothing to see here.
To be fair, killing a blank slate is different than killing a guy everybody wants dead
2 problems here. Firstly a fetus is not alive so can’t be killed. Secondly I didn’t want that guy dead.
Hi, pro-choice mathematician who’s done biology work here. Fetuses are alive. Fetuses are composed of living tissues. If a fetus was not alive, it wouldn’t grow. If a fetus doesn’t grow it can’t be born. You will never win an argument with an anti-abortion nutjob if you get basic facts wrong. The reason a fetus doesn’t have the same moral weight as the human it needs to live off of is because fetuses aren’t sapient.
Strongly recommend not using this argument, or any of the ones showing up in this sub-thread. No one is going to be convinced on any of this. The people trying to ban abortion will never, ever be convinced by arguments about when life begins – and will likely just become more certain that the pro choice crowd are full of callous monsters that don’t grant dignity to life.
Read A Defense of Abortion, Judith Jarvis. It is the argument.
In a nutshell: it doesn’t matter if the fetus is alive/a human/has a soul/whatever. You can grant that it is a full human being with rights from the beginning, even. Our ethical rules place autonomy of your own body hierarchically higher than preserving the life of someone else. That must be true or else it would be perfectly reasonable to harvest extra organs from people without their consent, take any or all property from citizens without cause to give to the needy, or draft individuals into whatever charitable work you wanted with no due process. There are very strict limits on how much charity a person can be mandated to participate in, and that limit is usually down to transient circumstances and taxes. It certainly does not dive into your flesh.
The state has no business enforcing control over decisions an individual makes about the contents of their own uterus, even if those decisions may lead to a death.
Whether or not it is RIGHT or GOOD to get an abortion doesn’t even matter and, frankly, isn’t worth debating. That is a subjective question. All that matters is whether the state is allowed to step in and prevent it from happening – and they aren’t.
The only thing marking a clear difference between a fetus and any other person is the fetus’s need of the womb to live. And unfortunately for the fetus, one person’s need of some service to live is not sufficient to enslave another.
Arguments with unreasonable people aren’t won by making the unreasonable person change their mind they’re won by showing the audience that the person is unreasonable, which in turn shows their word can’t be trusted.
I don’t think any undecided audience will be convinced by this “mass of cells”-style argument either. But to someone who DOES worry that it is a ‘person’ being aborted, hearing someone else dismiss that life makes it seem like the pro-choice people are callous and uncaring.
If you’re arguing for an audience, all the more reason to be explicit and clear about the underlying ethical conviction rather than just a subjective opinion about what is and isn’t life. How this is about a person’s right to make the right choice for themselves, privately.
Either that or talk about the pain and hardship brought on by pregnancy, especially pregnancy caused by violence, and the benefit the abortion can provide. That can also be pretty compelling.
You would have a hard time convincing me that a newborn was a sapient being.
I don’t see how that’s relevant to the point.
1 - it’s still stopping the existence of an organism and preventing a human life from happening after it already started to happen. Call it not killing something, but we’re basically arguing semantics. I’m pro choice, but I mean, own what you are doing. It’s not exactly preventative it’s reactive.
2 - idk and idc who this hitman guy is, I meant your usual death row guy who viscously killed/etc multiple people in a horrifying way. Someone an overwhelming majority of people would have no problem with being killed. Someone who has demonstrated we permanently need out of society and has spread suffering. I’m anti death penalty, but not because there’s any love lost with those people - only because we convict and kill the wrong people sometimes.
To be fair, insofar as execution methods go, nitrogen asphyxiation is far far far and away the most humane.
So, like, it is an improvement? It’s less inhumane than they were being at any rate?
Considered too cruel to be used by vets because of the clear signs of distress shown in animals to which it was administered. But this guy says it’s good enough for humans!
It’s important that a prisoner not just be killed, but can feel themselves dying, apparently.
I understand why you would think this seems peaceful. But we have no idea whether it is, anyone claiming otherwise is bullshitting or lying, and the entire idea of “humane” execution is an oxymoron to begin with.
Considered too cruel to be used by vets because of the clear signs of distress shown in animals to which it was administered.
Could you provide a reference for this? According to the Wikipedia article on inert gas asphyxiation:
Diving animals such as rats and minks and burrowing animals are sensitive to low-oxygen atmospheres and (unlike humans) will avoid them, making purely hypoxic techniques possibly inhumane[citation needed] for them.
This makes sense, but there’s also a [citation needed] there. And even if true, it explicitly draws a distinction between these sorts of animals and humans, which the rest of the article is quite emphatic do not have sensitivity to low oxygen.
They were possibly confusing nitrogen with carbon dioxide. CO2 will definitely lead to distress in high concentrations, and has been used in some slaughterhouses.
The fucking US Veterinary Association published that it is only approved for pigs and even then recommends sedating the animal first because of observations of extreme distress. This is widely published – find it if you want, I don’t care at this point. Wikipedia is not going to undermine the countless medical organizations who all objected or condemned this shit. So sick of the wikipedia PhDs in this thread claiming to know what none of the doctors or medical researchers do.
Were you aware that humans aren’t a subject of authority of the US Veterinary Association?
Still waiting on that reference, BTW.
Love that you had the time to get your degree from wikipedia but couldn’t plug “veterinary association nitrogen asphyxiation” into a search engine and click the first, second, or third result.
For me, the first are a couple of UN articles about the subject that contain all of this information. But you couldn’t be bothered to look this up because you can only do wikipedia “research” that confirms your priors, not that might contradict them.
Again, human medicine is not an area that the US Veterinary Association should be having much to say about.
You claim to have a reference, why aren’t you pasting it? Surely that’s easier than rambling on about it.
It’s more humane than lethal injection, the only other way we do it, which I think is the argument here
Lethal injection with heroin or carfentanyl would be pretty humane I would say
Humans don’t have low oxygen sensitivity. That’s pretty well established fact. Nitrogen asphyxiation is basically “little bit dizzy -> pass out -> dead.”
It is absolutely, certainly, no question more humane than any other method of execution.
Note, I don’t say that it is humane, just that it’s more humane. And I’d much prefer that, if an execution is going to happen, it be as humane as possible.
Oh, you’ve done it? Tell me about your specific medical expertise that is greater than… basically every medical organization that has spoken on the subject. Is your expertise also that you read a wikipedia page?
Pretty much everything real on the subject is about industrial accidents, which are not really analagous, or from the few examples of euthanasia with nitrogen pods – and the information provided by Dr. Philip Nitschke who researched the actual N2 aspyxiation euthanasia devices and who publicly said the Alabama method was not like that at all and was likely to cause significant pain and distress.
~22 minutes is now being reported, with the guy struggling, gasping, resisting, fighting, trying not to die. Fighting for his life on the gurney. This method provides no guarantees, no timelines, and DEFINITELY is not the nonsense people are describing about “gentle sleep” or whatever the fuck.
I suspect you and the people in this thread have exactly the same level of expertise as the Al lawmakers and agencies that allowed this to happen: bullshit none.
I thought, hmm, maybe this guy is right, and there is some body of research that says nitrogen asphyxiation is actually painful, so I tried to find a source to that fact. I couldn’t find a single one.
I found many saying the Alabama protocols for administering it were bad, and could prolong the process.
I found many saying that leakages were dangerous, as the other people in the room might die of nitrogen asphyxiation without even knowing it was happening.
I’ve read that the man being executed really really would like to not be executed, and is fighting tooth and nail to prevent it, leading to thrashing about on the gurney.
I’ve found sources saying that testing out novel execution methods on inmates is by definition torture, and cruel and unusual punishment.
But I can’t find a single source that claims the process is physically painful. Maybe I’m wrong, and if so, I’d love to know. Can you link me something that says so? I mean this very sincerely. I’d like to be corrected if so.
But all I can find are those things listed above. Nothing at all that I can find that implies that nitrogen asphyxiation is anything other than unnoticeable to the person it kills.
But that IS the point. We don’t know. It isn’t studied – cannot be studied ethically.
It is presumed to be painless based on unrelated case studies. And so people are proudly and confidently stepping forward to say “ignore the situations where it causes apparent pain and distress (animal examples), we’ll just use very different industrial accidents where we THINK it maybe was painless but have no way to know and will use that to declare it is painless.”
Meanwhile this guy struggled to live for over 20 minutes tied to a gurney.
You have a belief without evidence. You have to prove it. And we both know it is not going to happen because the research doesn’t exist and would be unethical.
But people die from nitrogen asphyxiation all the time. It’s in fact well studied that it is so deadly because it can kill you without you even knowing there is a problem. This is widely accepted as fact.
And we know that animals sense oxygen presence differently than humans. I can’t find a single reputable source saying otherwise. All admit that humans don’t sense oxygen deprivation the same way many other animals do.
And yes, this man struggled for 20min on a gurney. Just like he did when they tried to give him a lethal injection. They never even got the needle in for that one. Dude didn’t want to die, which is super reasonable. Of course he struggled. It doesn’t mean the method of execution was painful.
I don’t have a belief without evidence. I have a belief based on accounts of people accidentally exposed to high nitrogen environments.
And while I certainly agree that it’s unethical to study nitrogen asphyxiation by trying to kill people with it, that’s not the only way to study the effects of breathing nitrogen on the human body. We study accidents and suicide attempts after the fact. We in fact can learn about things that kill people without actively and purposely killing people with them.
Any suggestions for alternatives? The poor unfortunate souls on death row salute you. Can’t cause them any distress now. I’m sure their victims got the same consideration.
Good thing executing prisoners never gets the wrong people and always makes the victims whole.
I would not say executing innocents is a good thing. I understand your compassion though. It speaks well to you. Unfortunately there is usually no being made whole when it comes to tragedy. I believe the bar for proving guilt when the death penalty is involved is quite high. I have seen the cases of the few exonerated from death row and I am thankful for that. There are people out there fighting for those wrongly accused. However, there are many more clear cut open and shut cases of those not deserving to exist among their fellow man who have done things to the innocent that are hard to even read.
Oh the bar is quite high. No problem then, it will only be a small number of definitely innocent people we murder.
How about we can execute people, but if they’re later exonerated every single person involved in the execution themselves gets executed automatically. I think that may enforce a high enough standard for me.
People keep saying this, but it seems like this execution proved that it’s not true.
How so? Cause the dude was vigorously fighting the guys holding a mask to his face to try and stop them from killing him? I don’t think that’s evidence that nitrogen asphyxiation is painful. Dude did the same thing with the lethal injection, and they never even managed to get the needle in.
the humane part, to me, is the struggle.
The inhumane part is putting someone through that and saying, “Good job.”
Oh, for sure. And I agree that the death penalty is fundamentally inhumane. I also understand that justice is hard to manage and measure. Idk, I’m drunk and not paid enough to have to make hard decisions like that, and for that I’m very much appreciative. :)
why can’t they just give them an insane amount of opiates rather than all this odd shit
(if we have to kill people, which we shouldn’t)
I know a lot of people die accidentally this way, but I wonder if it’s always peaceful. I had to take oxys once and - granted, the dose was minuscule - I experienced some pretty intense paradoxical effects for a while before I noticed any degree of sedation. Would giving 100x guarantee immediate sedation and respiratory shutdown, or would they be convulsing and puking everywhere on their way out?
You know that sleepyness where you literally cannot keep your eyes open and keep dozing off? That’s what an opioid overdose is like. If you gave someone a bunch of morphine, they’d fall asleep and soon after stop breathing.
Some people experience different levels of nausea from different kinds of opioids, so some level of discomfort will exist in some percent of the population without either testing out the different opioids on the prisoner or giving them an anti-nausea drug.
So, a gas chamber? Back to 1938, are we?
The method itself is not problematic.
Jesus fucking Christ
Murder is still murder, no matter if it’s legalized.
And an execution is a premeditated murder in cold blood, even a systemic one. It’s pretty much the worst kind of murder.
And yes, every kind of murder is problematic. Using gas chambers just gives it the correct appearance: state sponsored serial murder.
Do you struggle with context, hypotheticals, or both?
You seem to have no arguments for your opinion, otherwise why would you have to resort to personal attacks?
These kinds of comments are usually the internet equivalent of a white flag.
It isn’t an opinion, though, you are simply failing to follow the conversation. I said “the method itself”, which implies that I am comparing this method to other methods and NOT discussing whether or not capital punishment is ok.
And you are not getting the point. Every method of killing people is terrible and inhumane. There is no humane way of killing people, because the very act of killing people is inhumane.
The only humane method is one that doesn’t kill or harm people.
What if they want to be killed?
I’d argue any method of killing a living being against their will is problematic…
No, you’re arguing the decision to kill a living being against their will is problematic, in which I wholeheartedly agree.
To be able to call the method problematic implies you find killing against will acceptable.
This particular method (inert gas asphyxiation) is absolutely not problematic when killing people that choose to do so: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarco_pod
Sure, but that’s not what we are talking about.
The method
What about imprisoning them against their will?
If they are danger to others, sure.
So it’s okay to torture people if they’re a danger to others, but not kill them?
If someone is eminent danger to others and there is no other option, it’s ok to kill them to in my book. But no it’s not ok to torture people at al. But I make a difference between torture and imprisonment: since I think prisoners deserve humane conditions and rehabilitation should be the goal, prison should not be like torture. If your prison is torture you doing it wrong.
What happens when people commit more crimes because the consequence of imprisonment is not enough of a deterrent?
