Alabama inmate opposes being ‘test subject’ for new nitrogen execution method

An Alabama inmate would be the test subject for the “experimental” execution method of nitrogen hypoxia, his lawyers argued, as they asked judges to deny the state’s request to carry out his death sentence using the new method.

In a Friday court filing, attorneys for Kenneth Eugene Smith asked the Alabama Supreme Court to reject the state attorney general’s request to set an execution date for Smith using the proposed new execution method. Nitrogen gas is authorized as an execution method in three states but it has never been used to put an inmate to death.

Smith’s attorneys argued the state has disclosed little information about how nitrogen executions would work, releasing only a redacted copy of the proposed protocol.

MedicPigBabySaver,

It’s way better than an electric chair.

snooggums,
@snooggums@kbin.social avatar

Moat likely, but since qualified people don't participate in executions it will probably end up being done wrong and he will suffocate to death with carbon dioxide and suffer horribly in a different way.

neuropean,

Unlikely, unless the nitrogen flow rate is way too low. Even then, it would take a considerable amount of time.

snooggums,
@snooggums@kbin.social avatar

They keep fucking up injections, do you think they are going to get airflow stuff right?

QuinceDaPence,

Should just be opening a valve. There's no mixture to get right like with the injection. Just 100% nitrogen.

snooggums,
@snooggums@kbin.social avatar

You would think so, but the people who are fucking up injections are making even more basic mistakes than the amount of chemicals. They are extremely likely to mess up the seals, the equipment that has the valve, and a ton of other steps that would make the process work successfully.

One third of executions in 2022 were botched. Why would a new method have a higher success rate?

SamboT,

Why would you assume a new method would have the exact same success rate as different methods?

snooggums,
@snooggums@kbin.social avatar

Because I assume the same incompetent people will be trying something new and therefore more likely to fuck it up.

SamboT,

Heuristics sure are fun. Unfortunately they are often wrong and thinking things out is better. Maybe don’t broadcast strong opinions for things you don’t know anything about. It’s a lonely life here on Lemmy but there are other ways to get attention and validation than instantiating some opinion that you’ve held long enough to type it out.

Serinus,

Because it’s extremely simple.

You can still think executions are wrong without making up nonsense to justify it.

Mdotaut801,

It is extremely simple…and yet they still fuck it up. That’s his point. Can you read?

MedicPigBabySaver,

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    SheeEttin,

    No, he’s right. Qualified medical professionals don’t do executions.

    MedicPigBabySaver,

    deleted_by_moderator

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    Zealousideal_Fox900,

    deleted_by_moderator

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    MedicPigBabySaver,

    deleted_by_moderator

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    Zealousideal_Fox900,

    deleted_by_moderator

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    MedicPigBabySaver,

    deleted_by_moderator

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    Zealousideal_Fox900,

    Someone likes being banned

    MedicPigBabySaver,

    deleted_by_moderator

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    Zealousideal_Fox900,

    deleted_by_moderator

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    Hazdaz,

    So put a bullet in his head and call it a day. Enough with this bullshit.

    Zombiepirate, (edited )
    @Zombiepirate@lemmy.world avatar

    Seriously, who gives a fuck about boring legal motions when we’re about to give the blood god his due?!

    Sacrifice! Sacrifice!

    We’re so fuckin’ horny for it!!

    Hazdaz,

    Make sure the pentagram is nice and even. Remember, the inside angle is 36 degrees.

    Even those who defend murderers should learn to use a straight-edge and compass.

    Zombiepirate,
    @Zombiepirate@lemmy.world avatar

    Where did I defend a murderer?

    I’m thirsty for their blood just like you!

    There’s nothing more important than killing people who we’ve already removed from society; how else are we going to satisfy our horniness?

    Hazdaz,

    Still breathing our air. I guess those who defend convicted murderers enjoy breathing in what they exhale. Do you want to fluff up their pillow too?

    Zombiepirate,
    @Zombiepirate@lemmy.world avatar

    You keep saying I’m defending a murderer when I just want to get my rocks off like you.

    Unless fluffing their pillow makes you climax better? I’m into it if you are.

    And fuck them for taking all of our air! We need that shit!

    Hazdaz,

    We do need that shit. luckily no matter what all the murderer defenders come up with, this asswipe is dead-man-walking.

    Zombiepirate,
    @Zombiepirate@lemmy.world avatar

    I know, I’m so turgid right now!

    Let’s bag this guy and release some hormones! Enough waiting!!

    Hazdaz,

    I’m fairly congested too… enough talk. Let’s just do it.

    deft,

    This comment was funny but your argument with this guy became kinda dumb.

    This dude forfeited his life for crimes he absolutely unequivocally committed. How he is killed, he has no right to decide. We the people do. Original commenter dude has a rough take but it isn’t that cruel, fuck murderers they’re fortunate we the people dislike violence and actively seek humane executions.

    Zombiepirate,
    @Zombiepirate@lemmy.world avatar

    But the US justice system has proven time and again that it is not to be trusted with killing prisoners.

    We have literally thousands of examples of innocent people being killed due to faults in our justice system; how many innocent people are acceptable to kill to keep this failure of an institution standing?

    Life in prison is both less expensive and leaves the situation open to remuneration in the case of wrongful conviction.

    deft,

    Don’t disagree but does feel like a moment to point out America’s war crimes and what we’ve done to the world. This isn’t a wrongful killing and this isn’t generations of cancer and trauma and ruined societies because of our country.

    This particular person right here is guilty though and in this one instance, fuck him. Fuck this guy. He is not part of our society, he’s not our friend or an ally or even deserving of humanity we treat one another with for how he treated one of us. It is decided he will experience the first version of this method of removal. He has no right to decide how, that is forfeit for him and allowing him to have that is injustice to the people he’s harmed.

    And homie above saying fuck it shoot him was bad taste but jeez it is a tasteless comment at best.

    Zombiepirate,
    @Zombiepirate@lemmy.world avatar

    I won’t lose sleep over a real murderer being killed.

    My issue is the systemic failure of our justice system, not a guilty individual losing their life. So I’ll ask again: how many innocent people is it worth sacrificing to get the ones who really have it coming, and why?

    We know that innocent people will be killed via capital punishment. Why is the institution worth keeping when life in prison is cheaper and allows for remuneration when the justice system inevitably gets one wrong?

    Serinus,

    Well, it’s not like we should treat 20 years in prison less lightly. And we certainly do.

    havokdj,

    Because unironically, shooting him in the head would be infinitely cheaper, infinitely quicker, and infinitely more fun for the executioner than any other method save for hanging (except for the quicker part).

    It’s also painless, the most expensive cost would be hiring someone to clean up afterwards.

    Something else you have to keep in mind with people like this, we do not ask to be born into society, or as humans. Most of us enjoy who we are and love being a part of society for the most part, but killers often time do not feel human, they feel like it is the world and themselves, separate not the same. Whatever the case may be that causes this, including a condition or mental illness.

    Yes, what has to be done must be done, but you should understand that it is not something that is done or should be done out of some kind of revenge hate fetish, it is something that is done to remove those people from our society because they are unfortunately too dangerous to be left alive, too dangerous to live even in a standard prison.

    Once you start adding hate, anger, revenge, etc to the mix, you might as well just start throwing the zyklon b and burn pits in too, because that’s what a society that kills with hatred does. Unless that person has specifically done something to you, your family, or your friends, you should harbor no hatred for them, only sympathy.

    108,
    @108@kbin.social avatar

    Skulls for the Skull Throne!

    zovits,

    Milk for the Khorneflakes!

    SuddenlyBlowGreen,

    https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/a6603e38-7f5c-4dca-9087-0230f6f36ed5.jpeg

    TimewornTraveler,

    the state should just execute everyone who says it’s okay for the state to execute someone

    HerbalGamer,

    I’ll take it if he doesn’t want it.

    PsychedSy,

    I was gonna say they could test on me, but I don’t want to support the death penalty.

    bobman,

    Unless they’re pedophiles!

    HerbalGamer,

    WoO stupid take

    bobman,

    Why?

    HerbalGamer,

    Pedophiles usually don’t want to be pedophiles and won’t act on their desires; they’re just quietly suffering from mental illness and just their existence shouldn’t change someone’s stance on the death penalty.

    bobman,

    Yeah, I’m talking about the pedophile who do act on their desires.

    Sorry that needs to be spelled out for you.

    Glad we can both agree they deserve the death penalty.

    butterflyattack,

    I agree that there are some crimes so horrible that the offenders no longer deserve to live. The trouble is that I don’t trust police and the courts to correctly identify the guilty all of the time. Until there’s a system that can prove guilt with 100% accuracy we shouldn’t have a death penalty.

    Zealousideal_Fox900,

    Yeah. Look at I think it was either south korea or taiwan but one of them went and grabbed a dude for murder and then killed him, came out a few months later he was nowhere fucking near the crime and was completely innocent. They grabbed another dude and did the same. Wrong. Again. They never even found the actual killer.

    Serinus,

    To make the same point in a less sarcastic way, it is a problem that just throwing the term pedophile at someone immediately ostracizes them and society is willing to condem them to effective death.

    It’s so bad that a jury doesn’t even really need evidence to indict. Because apparently seeing one, potentially censored image is enough to cause PTSD?

    I’ve seen people being decapitated without getting PTSD. I’ve seen horrible things from the Holocaust. I don’t think one image is going to cause permanent damage. (I fully believe dealing with this stuff every day for years can be an issue. That’s different.)

    We need to drop just a bit of the hysteria.

    butterflyattack,

    A while back round where I live a guy was burned to death by a mob of his neighbours because people were saying he was a pedophile. Turned out he had only been taking photos of kids vandalising his garden. Oops.

    Ashyr,

    Link to that news article?

    butterflyattack,

    theguardian.com/…/vigilante-murder-paedophile-bri…

    Ashyr,

    Thanks for sharing, but, at the same time, I really wish it wasn’t true.

    Zealousideal_Fox900,

    They should’ve given the people who did it a life order with all chances of parole chewed up, spat out, burnt up and the ashes shot into oblivion before being buried 900 feet underground.

    DarthBueller,

    Holy fucking shit. It never once occurred to me that lynching was a thing in the modern UK. Mass stabbings? Sure. Getting mugged and beaten by gangs of teens, okay. But straight up lynching? Fuck.

    angrystego,

    I agree with you when it comes to the ostracizing problem. I would just like to remind you that not everyone is psychologically identical to you. Some (perhaps many) people CAN get PTSD by looking at a picture of a terrible crime.

    Serinus,

    I don’t think a bunch of people got PTSD from 4chan 2004.

    angrystego,

    I don’t think willing participants count ;)

    WldFyre,

    Ah yes, 4chan, full of normal, well-adjusted people

    DarthBueller,

    I have seen some horrible shit too. Like that girl and her male cousin rapping in a bathroom with a gun, and she winds up accidentally killing her cousin and then killing herself after she realized what she did. Yeah, never going to forget that. Don’t have PTSD from it, but definitely was traumatic.

    Zealousideal_Fox900,

    When I was 11 I saw a whole 40 minute documentary from 1945 about it and I haven’t gotten PTSD from it.

    AllonzeeLV,

    Right? Why aren’t suicide booths a thing yet?

    The capitalist owners could make more profit off it, and that’s literally all human civilization values. And bonus, the people the Capitalists and their doting peasant sycophants consider “lazy, socialist commies” would largely opt out, leaving them to count their shillings in peace, unopposed.

    Is it about needing a homeless population that can’t (easily) opt out to scare the other peasants into continuing to show up for their purposeless jobs? Or just the last thin fig leaf of the capitalists deluding themselves into believing themselves less than monstrous?

    Because being trapped in this labor camp of a civilization isn’t mercy. It’s the opposite of mercy. Not legalizing escape isn’t the same thing as valuing life, and we clearly don’t. It’s the same thing as an anti-abortionist claiming to value human life while opposing social programs to help the newborn and mother.

    manofnyan,

    Capitalists make portable suicide booths called guns! They love them

    Neil,
    @Neil@lemmy.ml avatar

    Lol, way to shoot yourself in the foot. Nitrogen hypoxia is probably the absolute most humane execution method ever conceived. This is not new info either. You literally slip into happy fun time and never come out.

    harrim4n,

    Might be trying to delay the execution itself since there is a shortage of the “regular” injection they use because of embargoes?

    itsdavetho,

    Completely ignoring that execution is wrong for a number of reasons

    Neil,
    @Neil@lemmy.ml avatar

    I also completely ignored the issue of world hunger in my reply. I don’t get your point.

    ThrowawayPermanente,

    Why would you even bring up hunger when human trafficking exists in the world? Shame on you.

    PetDinosaurs,

    Guys, I think I found a solution to both. Hear me out.

    What if we feed the trafficked humans to the hungry humans.

    Win win. No more trafficked humans and no more hungry humans.

    Neil,
    @Neil@lemmy.ml avatar

    I change my mind. THIS is now the most humane execution method ever conceived.

    Eezyville,
    @Eezyville@sh.itjust.works avatar

    You’ve experienced this?

    FlyingSquid,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    You literally slip into happy fun time

    Is it really ‘happy fun time’ if you know you’re going to die?

    darq,
    @darq@kbin.social avatar

    Weirdly enough, it might be. There are videos of people deliberately testing hypoxia. I've seen one where the person controlling the test told the participant "you know you are dying right now, right?" and the participant responded "Oh" with a big smile. Now maybe the participant was more chill because they knew beforehand that they weren't actually going to die. But they were still completely non-phased watching their brain shut down in real time.

    I'm opposed to the death penalty. But if I had to choose my own way out of this world? Hypoxia is probably top of the list.

    Chainweasel,

    Listen to audio recordings of pilots with hypoxia, they understand something is very wrong with the plane, but they also think it’s just fine because they’re having a great day.

    Kalkaline,
    @Kalkaline@leminal.space avatar

    I always think about Destin from Smarter Everyday when I think about hypoxia. He does such a great job at articulating what he experienced and how difficult it was to know what to do in that moment.

    3ntranced,

    I always think of thatt moment when they’re like “it’s time to put your mask back on or you’re going to die destin!” and he just looks at them with a terrified half smile and was barely capable of saying “I don’t know what to do…”

    QuinceDaPence,

    I got a bit hypoxic on top of a mountain. It was 29°F with the wind you'd expect at 14000ft, and I'm just standing there in a t-shirt because I was just so nice and warm, also I was so loopy I could not stop laughing.

    Agent641,

    Did you die?

    tehevilone,

    Yes, but they got better after.

    Agent641,

    Phew

    snooggums,
    @snooggums@kbin.social avatar

    If done right. You know that people qualified to do it right don't participate in executions, right?

    That's why they fuck up giving someone injections on a regular basis.

    shalafi,

    How does one fuck up flooding a room with nitrogen gas?

    snooggums,
    @snooggums@kbin.social avatar

    Step 1: Be incompetent.

    shalafi,

    So you see no difference in lethal injection and filling a room with nitrogen? If not, there’s no point discussing it with you. But I’ll give you a hint! Worst case, there’s not enough NO2 to cause death, so the subject gets stoned as balls and they introduce more.

    This ain’t rocket science.

    snooggums,
    @snooggums@kbin.social avatar

    I see no difference in an incompetent person trying something they are not qualified to do and then trying to do another thing they are unqualified to do. I expect them to fail at both.

    You also don't appear to understand how the NO2 process works. It isn't that they just need to add more N02, they also need to remove the oxygen AND CO2 at the same time. That is actually fairly complicated and requires knowledge on air movement in a restricted space. If they can't properly dose someone with needles, good luck on them doing it right with airflow.

    DarthBueller,

    This isn’t a “gas chamber” type of execution. They’re putting a mask on the person with nitrogen gas. Though the state’s executioners are so incompetent that they’ll probably end up gassing themselves.

    bookmeat,

    The issue is with the specific protocol being used. It’s not made public or documented. It’s almost all though they’re interested in torturing him instead of humanely executing him.

    stewie3128,

    When the original news broke about Alabama using nitrogen, my wife woke me up by hitting my arm to tell me - because I’ve been saying that is the most humane possible method for the last 16 years.

    I think the death penalty is stupid to begin with, and am kinda over talking about its merits after years of debate team in high school and college. But trying all of these seat-of-pants cocktails of midazolam and pentobarbital etc, and then inventing all of these ridiculous devices that require two people to push buttons at the same time so no one ever really knows whose button actually killed the person… it’s just needlessly complicated and dumb. Not to mention the fact that the legal costs involved in defending appeals and housing someone on death row are much higher than the cost of a life sentence anyway. And that’s leaving aside the statistically significant number of wrongful convictions…

    I mean, we shouldn’t have the death penalty. But if we’re going to, it should be by nitrogen hypoxia.

    DarthBueller,

    I am split - there shouldn’t be a death penalty, and the horrors of botched executions go a long way toward undermining support for the system. While nitrogen hypoxia would be humane, it also makes the death penalty so much easier to sell. Part of me would rather have it be barbarous to undermine support. Though I can see the state being so incompetent that they end up gassing half of the executioners along with the inmate, even though they’re just putting a mask on the inmate’s face.

    ChaoticNeutralCzech,
    @ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de avatar

    I don’t know much about asphyxiation but it does not sound comfortable. Concerning lethal injection, it’s not certain how much pain the paralyzed body feels as the heart is being stopped – have there been EEG studies?

    I would prefer execution by firing squad.

    Venutianxspring,

    It’s supposed to be very painless. If I remember correctly your body can’t tell the difference between oxygen and nitrogen so you don’t have a feeling of lack of air, just continue breathing normally then fall asleep and expire.

    XTL,

    Generally, the build up of CO2 is what triggers pain and panic of asphyxiation. Oxygen displacing gases certainly do cause fast unconsciousness and brain damage. Would seem very likely that nitrogen works well.

    WVbrU,

    The human body can only detect a buildup of carbon dioxide in the lungs, not a lack of oxygen. This is why it’s uncomfortable to hold your breath for a long time. If you inhale pure nitrogen while being able to exhale, there is no build up of CO2 and therefore little to no discomfort.

    Wikipedia cites a USAF text, saying: “Some individuals experience headache, dizziness, fatigue, nausea and euphoria, and some become unconscious without warning.”

    Zoboomafoo,
    @Zoboomafoo@lemmy.world avatar

    This is why it’s uncomfortable to hold your breath for a long time.

    If you want to try it at home, try inhaling the air inside a soda bottle

    HubertManne,
    @HubertManne@kbin.social avatar

    over holding your breath because they are both co2???

    Zoboomafoo,
    @Zoboomafoo@lemmy.world avatar

    That just doesn’t sound practical

    HubertManne,
    @HubertManne@kbin.social avatar

    yes. thus my confusion.

    FuglyDuck,
    @FuglyDuck@lemmy.world avatar

    have there been EEG studies?

    there have and it’s horrendous.

    In any case, displacing oxygen with nitrogen is one of those things that you’d never notice until it was too late. because your body bases it’s breathing off how much air your sucking in, you don’t even start hyper ventilating.

    QuinceDaPence,

    There's plenty of knowledge about the effects of nitrogen from it being a workplace hazard in a lot of places.

    One example is anchor chain lockers on ships. That big iron chain that just came out of the salt water wants to turn into iron oxide so it absorbs all the oxygen making the environment extremely nitrogen rich. In several cases people have been climbing down into it and without warning go unconscious. I think one case had three dead at the bottom before the fourth guy comes along with some brains and thinks maybe I shouldn't go down there.

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