Transcript
Alabama suffocated a man to death in a gas chamber tonight after starving him so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit as they did it. And this was deemed perfectly legal by multiple courts in the vaunted American legal system.
That’s what happens when you value institutions over people.
Link for more info: https://www.reuters.com/legal/alabama-prepares-carry-out-first-execution-by-nitrogen-asphyxiation-2024-01-25/
Bluntly, choking on your own vomit is probably a really terrible way to die. If I recall correctly he was put in a chamber where the majority of the air in the room was replaced with nitrous oxide, asphyxiating the subject. If he had choked on his vomit, it would have been closer to drowning than suffocating in the manner that was intended.
By asphyxiating him in this way, his suffering was effectively eliminated during the execution; but if he had vomited and choked on it… Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever found yourself short of air in a body of water, but it’s a pretty unpleasant experience. It only gets worse as you get closer to death when drowning (from what I’ve heard/understood from people who have nearly drown).
The intention of not giving him food so he didn’t vomit, was a humane decision, not intended for additional suffering and cruelty.
Twisting the intent like this is doing a disservice to the entire process. You can dislike capital punishment all you want, and I may even agree that it shouldn’t be done, but the fact is, this statement is misleading at best. I’m all for a healthy discussion on it, but let’s not conflate the issue with these misconceptions.
I believe it was a mask with nitrogen.
That’s my understanding as well. So since I don’t see anyone else saying this in detail here goes:
I am not a biologist or a medical professional, but this is my understanding of the process.
The human body does not monitor blood oxygen levels. When you or I hold our breath, the feeling of urgent discomfort we feel is due to a rise in the carbon dioxide (more specifically the carbonic acid) in our blood. Inhaling pure nitrogen will still allow CO2 to exit the bloodstream, so if someone is not made aware of the fact that they are breathing pure nitrogen, they won’t even know they are dying.
This person knew they were being executed, which I can only imagine induced a ton of stress and anxiety, yes. However, if you were to tell me that I was being executed tomorrow but I could pick which of the methods currently employed in the US I would be killed by, this would be at the top of the list.
If you want to argue that executing people is morally wrong and we should stop, sure, let’s have that discussion. However, we don’t need to characterize this method as more inhumane than others to do so.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. I for one personally believe that capitol punishment is inherently inhumane and shouldn’t be practiced in a functional contemporary society.
That said, nitrogen asphyxiation is by far one of the most humane execution methods employed today and, on paper, shouldn’t cause the victim any pain, discomfort or distress. If you actually look at the symptoms of nitrogen narcosis and hypoxia you’ll see that pretty clearly.
In this case, as the article explains, the victims suffering was self inflicted as a result of stress, distress, and previous medical conditions.
To paraphrase the article, a previously botched execution via lethal injection years before resulted in ongoing nausea. The man expressed concern that this could cause him to vomit in the nitrogen mask which could have caused him to drown in his own vomit so he was starved for 10 hours prior to prevent this from happening.
During the actual execution, the victim reportedly attempted to hold his breath as long as he could before struggling against his restraints for as long has he retained consciousness. This is just a stress response to being executed, not a side effect of the execution method. It’s not an uncommon reaction to various other execution methods like gas chambers or lethal injection.
If you want inhumane execution methods, lethal injections are often botched and typically in extremely painful and torturous ways.
Arguably, the most humane, quickest, and most reliable painless method would probably be something like the guillotine but I’d be surprised if that got widespread support.
Again, by no means do I support capitol punishment but as execution methods go, this is probably the most humane way we’ve tried so far.
The guillotine?! Which your brain/consciousness can stay functioning for 30 sec and up to like 4 min? That is better than nitrogen asphyxiation?
Now by all means by your criteria, yes it is fast and there is very little room for failure. However I think we still don’t know if it is as painless as we perceive it to be with how long you can stay concieous.
Regardless I am also of the same mind that we could move away from capital punishment as a society.
Unfortunately it appears they didn’t use a system which extracted CO2 from the air supply.
This is problematic with a mask vs. a chamber the CO2 concentration within the mask would have increased.
That would mean CO2 would not leave the lungs.
So the CO2 probably did build up in his blood and he experienced a suffocation sensation as if he held his breath.
We know how to kill people humanely. That was not the way this was done.
Even if someone wanted to die, this would have been an inhumane thing to do to someone.
He took 22 minutes or so to die. Guards in the room said it was awful to watch. His suffering was INCREASED by using this untested method. But then that was surely the point…
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I’d inherently call that suffering. Borderline torture, if I’m being honest.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/kenneth-smith-nitrogen-execution-alabama-b2485563.html
Well, him holding his breath is a choice he made. I’m not sure that was a process error, or anything that could have been prevented except to sedate him as the other poster suggested.
I’m not condoning it or justifying anything, I’m just pointing out a fact. He wasn’t getting out of that chair alive, he chose to do a thing that would prolong his life (and by consequence, create significant suffering), all for a few more minutes of existence.
Again, I’m not in favor of this or any kind of capital punishment personally. I just see the rationale from all sides and I can make an unbiased observation from the information. That doesn’t and shouldn’t imply that I agree with the rationale or that I condone it, I just understand it.
If people must be executed, nitrogen hypoxia is one of the least painful and most humane ways to go about it IMO. I’d rather they just were not executed, but even my opinion on that can vary; it really depends on the crime and the proof available. But I won’t open that can of worms any further than it already is. It’s an entirely different discussion not relevant to the matter being discussed.
I feel bad for this guy, he suffered unnecessarily partly due to his own actions, and partly due to the ineptitude of the people administrating the execution. The method of execution is valid when performed correctly (again, if they must execute, this is a valid course in my mind on that… Their reasoning in giving someone that sentence of execution is up for debate). Nobody deserves to die in pain, as far as I’m concerned. People do, every day, but they shouldn’t have to. I don’t care who they are or what they’ve done or anything. If someone is dying, they shouldn’t have their last moments be excruciating pain. We, as a society, should be doing everything we can to prevent that. In some cases it’s unavoidable, like accidents and such, but in every case where we can let someone die peacefully and painlessly, we should be doing that.
I’m different. I don’t see death the same way as most people. Death is the inevitable conclusion to life. It will happen. Being able to die without pain is something I believe in, and everyone should have the right to live until they naturally reach death. I believe in medically assisted suicide, that an individual should have the right to die, and that shouldn’t be something that anyone can take away from them. For me it goes hand in hand with bodily autonomy; the right to choose what happens to your body (both in life and death).
There’s a lot more to the discussion than just what specific thing happened during this one person’s execution. I don’t really feel good about anything that happened with this individual’s execution. I think the idea of execution by nitrogen hypoxia is better than other methods, but there’s still a lot of problems, both with how things are done and why. It merits more discussion in governments at all levels. I don’t claim to represent the majority, but I still think there should be more discussion so that these issues can be agreed upon by the majority. I don’t think that discussion has ended, and certainly there’s a lot of opinions on it, so I don’t think the issue is resolved by any stretch of the imagination.
SOMEBODY POSTED A REASONABLE OPINION ON THE INTERNET!
GRAB HIM
I’m not stranger to getting down voted for posting a reasonable opinion.
I have a viewpoint and I’m quite passionate about that viewpoint, but I’m just one person. I don’t have so much pride as to think my opinion is the only valid opinion, and I’m not going to delude myself into thinking that my opinion is shared among the majority. I just don’t have that much hubris.
In this example, if the majority want capital punishment, and I disagree with that, I’m left with two choices: either I can suck it up and move on, like an adult, or I can leave to find people who are more in line with my opinions.
I’m not going to try to invalidate someone else’s opinion just because my opinion is different.
can you reasonably call holding your breath voluntary in this situation? i dont think my holding my breath if someone holds my head underwater is a particularly conscious decision
Yes. Nitrogen hypoxia is something our body doesn’t naturally have a system to detect.
With drowning, the body knows that it’s not getting air, you choke on the fluid as it tries to enter your lungs. The body detects and rejects the incoming fluid.
Nitrogen is a natural part of the atmosphere, it’s the majority of the air we breathe, making up over three quarters of the gases we breathe in and out in normal atmosphere. Nitrogen doesn’t harm the body in this context, or any breathing context, to my knowledge.
Our “suffocating” reaction is typically based on CO2 concentrations. Basically, if we can’t get rid of CO2 through breathing and it builds up in our bodies, we get a suffocation reaction.
Interestingly, the body has no mechanism for monitoring O2. So as O2 levels drop, our body has no reaction to it.
So what happens with nitrogen hypoxia, is that the atmosphere can still accept CO2, and that can leave our system perfectly fine, and it doesn’t build up, which robs us of any biological detection that we are suffocating. Meanwhile since the atmosphere is absent of any concentration of O2, we don’t get any oxygen to add to our system. Since we don’t have a biological way to detect that, it goes largely unnoticed. In the case of nitrogen hypoxia, your CO2 concentration in your blood is never more than what is expected, but your blood O2 saturation falls. Typically, your blood O2 (or SpO2) is somewhere around 95% for a healthy person. Most people can survive unassisted with an SpO2 down to about 85-90%. When you start to dip below 85%, in a medical situation, like a hospital, you would be placed on oxygen to raise it back up, but you probably won’t die from low SpO2 alone at this level. You start risking death below 60% or so.
So what’s happening to the subject in the example above is that you get light headed as your brain and body are deprived of oxygen, this is one of the first signs. You may feel weak and tired. You may even get a bit delirious or giddy. As the SpO2 falls further and further, eventually your brain won’t have enough oxygen to continue, and you will lose consciousness. If the condition continues, then your body will shut down and cease it’s normal functions (like your heart beating, or breathing); and you will discontinue living.
We know these effects in detail because many people have both intentionally and unintentionally experienced this. The effects are well known, and more than a few people have unintentionally died from it. Nitrogen hypoxia is basically undetectable by your body. Nothing feels different about the air you breathe, and you simply get light headed, and eventually fall asleep to die. People get trained to recognise the symptoms if they work with nitrogen products, and if they’re ever in situations where nitrogen hypoxia is possible, and likely, as an effect of their work, for safety. I believe high altitude pilots get this same kind of training. I don’t believe commercial airliners count, since they’re not exactly skimming the atmosphere, and if they have any decompression of the cabin, they’ve been trained to drop to a lower altitude for this exact reason. Anyone climbing very tall mountains may also get training like this.
It’s a very dangerous situation to be in, but not scary when you experience it (unless you recognize what’s happening - which most people won’t).
There was no indication or biological function that caused him to feel the need to hold his breath. He only intellectually knew that he was going to be terminated in this manner a chose to hold his breath. He had no other reason to do it. His body wouldn’t have sent him any danger signals to hold his breath, nor did he have any discomfort that could have indicated that he should have. Only because the mask (or whatever apparatus) was placed on him with the nitrogen flowing. It’s tragic that he chose to fight against it in this way. His decisions made his experience a very unpleasant one. But make no mistake, they were conscious decisions on his part. By holding his breath, he would have had a build up of CO2 which would have felt like suffocating. He induced that in himself, and eventually when his SpO2 dropped to the point where he passed out, he breathed normally and perished anyways.
He make a conscious effort to survive in a situation he would not survive through, and created his own suffering in that moment.
Are you really saying that people are at fault for not wanting death?
That’s entirely not what I’m saying.
Please refrain from putting words in my mouth. My mouth is for eating.
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No source is actually claiming that, and I’ve only seen one person claim rebreathing was taking place. It was most likely just him holding his breath.
Idk man…something def wasn’t Right cuz even inhaling both CO2 and nitrogen gas at the same time should have killed him faster I think. Someone fucked up.
100%
I cannot see how this was more humane than chemical injection.
chemical injection or lethal injection as its referred to is ABSOLUTELY worse than this.
Lethal injection comes with the fun side effects of rolling the lottery on the anesthetic, the paralyzant. Or the cardiac arrest agent.
not enough anesthesia? Now you’re gonna feel all kinds of pain while not being able to move, at all! Not enough paralyzant? You can still move, and now it looks inhumane! you fuck up the both of those? They can feel it AND move, now it’s a fun experience for the WHOLE family! you mess up the last one? They won’t die! Oops.
Also failed injections, there have been numerous cases of failed injections leading to horrific chemical burns under the skin. There have been instances where prisoners were found with tons of injection sites. Implying that they failed repeatedly.
The best part? the ratio was cooked up by some dude who wasn’t a medical professional, and just went “thing to numb the pain, thing to stop them from moving, and a thing to stop the heart. NOW MY CONCOCTION IS PERFECTED!”
This is why manufacturers don’t sell the components anymore.
forcibly ending peoples lives just isnt humane to begin with. But given the option between the two, nitrogen hypoxia is better.
A helmet of high explosive would be extremely painless.
give em the ole spicy vest
Man, that’s crazy. Almost as crazy as stabbing Elizabeth Sennett to death in her home with fireplace pokers for $1000, then living another ~35 years on the taxpayer dime, and finally being executed for murdering a woman 36 years ago. ¯\(°_o)/¯
An eye for an eye leaves the world blind. How does killing him improve the world, that keeping him locked up wouldn’t?
Your platitude is bullshit. Eye for an eye has always been a deterrent for most. Gotta kill the rest. Like u said. U can’t let them out. Why kill him? Cuz that’s the definition of justice when he killed someone.
How is him sitting in prison justice? It’s not.
That is your definition of justice. I personally believe that a murder in response to a murder just makes two murders. I don’t see justice in that.
No, I’m talking about absolute justice. Your version is just a degree from letting them off Scott free. If the deterrent for death isn’t death then why punish them at all?
I don’t think people with your reasoning realize that you’re giving the murder what they want. Literally no one wants to die but ppl can do life in prison and laugh about all the people they killed and even profit or be glorified.
That’s your idea of justice in this case and it’s a slap on the face to families who have lost loved ones.
As far as I’m concerned you should look at it like every killer that gets out and kills again is on the shoulders of people like you.
they cant let him out because our penal system is dysfunctional and doesnt work.
I’m baffled that ANYBODY thought it was a good idea to begin with.
this is why countries and states that allow execution invariably have lower crime rates
i think justice is when my family doesnt get murdered in the first place because of policies that actually reduce crime, im quirky like that
it’s more expensive to execute people than imprison them for life.
According to this, as of 2015, the cost to incarcerate a man for 1 year in Alabama was $14,780.
As we all know, costs have skyrocketed since 2015, but let’s be ultra, ultra generous & say incarceration costs were a flat $10K/yr until 2014. 25 years at $10K/yr, $250K.
Let’s pretend inflation somehow never happened, 2015 - 2023, 9 years at $14,780. $133,020.
$133,020 + $250,000 = $383,020.
Inmate at one time requested firing squad, and death is death, so let’s say the bullet cost $2. You allocate an additional $4,998 for staff to perform firing squad duties, party balloons, party hats, and confetti. $5K & 5 mins…vs. 35 years & $383K++++, only to end with a more expensive & contrived execution style, more suffering, and the exact same end result. Death is death.
So about a million dollars, or 5 times cheaper than the median cost of the death penalty.
The median cost of a death penalty is $1,250,000
Even without your estimating and looking up the actual numbers — actual cost of lifetime incarceration is 800k, so in real life it’s only twice as expensive to execute someone. Also the equivalent of about 3-4 years salary of a corporate Director or VP
And that’s not even considering that incarceration has fringe benefits too. Through study, analysis, therapy and statistics we can learn how to prevent tragedy in future — not the case with execution.
You’re missing all of the lawyers fees to get to stop the execution.
What detailed and informative take. Thanks Butt Pirate!
The method wasn’t untested, it’s been done plenty before. The specific tools they used to do it were moronic and they didn’t fully understand how to do it properly. Basically they just didn’t do their homework.
There’s also the difference between “painless” and “easy to watch”. Lethal injection looks humane because they inject the person with a paralytic, so regardless of what happens it looks “peaceful”.
One of the drugs sometimes used (succinylcholine chloride) is fucking terrifying, because it’s a paralytic with no anesthetic effect. Given alone a person under its effects is aware of what’s going on while paralyzed and unable to breath.
Christ that’s scary af.
Medically it’s generally used to intubate someone in an emergency if the patient is conscious, seizing, etc. If the patient is aware, it’s given in conjunction with something for sedation like a benzo.
In an execution it’s given after a barbiturate for sedation , then followed with potassium chloride to stop the heart … assuming mistakes aren’t made, or something goes wrong.
That’s fair. I’m not up to date on all the specifics of this particular incident.
Them basically “winging” it, kinda fits.
Is that true? Where did you hear this?
The United Nations and European Union have already put out some public statements regarding this (well, about this new method), it was pretty big news (internationally). Apparently official reports say he was visibly shaking and had cramps during the execution…
Wouldn’t a guillotine be the most foolproof and painless method? The idea sounds a bit primitive, but it’s fast and effective I’d say.
I’d take that as an option personally at least.
There’s no evidence that it’s painless and there is evidence that you stay awake and aware of what’s happening to you for several seconds after you are beheaded.
We have no means by which to determine that death by beheading is not painful.
We do, however, have plenty of examples of nitrogen hypoxia, it’s effects and the sensations associated with it as you die, by people who were either revived or recovered from situations caused by nitrogen hypoxia.
Personally, I would be okay with death by nitrogen hypoxia, if I either wanted to, needed to, or were forced to die before the end of my life naturally. I presently have no desire to die, nor any need to, nor have I been sentenced to death (or any sentence) for crimes (of which, I have not committed any).
So my opinion is just that, an opinion. I would vastly prefer to continue living at the moment; so I’ll just stay out of trouble with the law by doing the same things I always have, and hopefully my health doesn’t cause the situation to change.
Death by beheading doesn’t sound very nice, but bluntly, it’s hard to screw up with something like a guillotine. Since law enforcement (specifically those in charge of executions), seem to be inept, the guillotine may be a better option, since it would be much more difficult for them to do in a way that’s so incorrect that it causes more suffering than what is normal for that process. IMO, that’s the only significant merit to something like the guillotine. It’s so basic they would have to try, in order to do it wrong.
Nitrogen hypoxia sounds more humane, indeed if done correctly. Otherwise the explosive taped to the head sounds pretty foolproof as well like some people suggested. Perhaps a bit disturbing though.
But I agree, the first step should be to not get into a situation where you’re facing this in the first place. But if we have to choose, good to have some options in mind.
Probably the most painless, foolproof method would be an explosive, just strong enough to turn the entire head into a fine mist, placed right at the base of the neck. The explosion propagates faster than neutron activation can happen, so by the time it would be possible to feel anything, the brain no longer exists.
You’re right. And you also probably meant NEURON activity 😉
Haha. Yes I did. Though if it would help, I also wouldn’t object to reversing the polarity of the neutron flow. 😁
Agreed, that sounds the most foolproof.
Think about how a guillotine works. It cuts off your head from your neck.
Think about how your body works. All of “you” exists in the head. You are dependent on everything below the neck to keep the head alive.
The guillotine doesn’t kill you. It separates “you” from the system that keeps “you” alive. It cuts off oxygen and energy from the brain. It is essentially suffocating, but without the muscles to suffocate.
So you are likely fully awake and aware of your surroundings. You are, in effect, holding your breath until you die, but also aware that “you” are in a tiny basket, separate from the things that keep “you” alive.
No thanks.
You know this smug motherfucker?
That’s Antoine Lavoisier, 18th century French chemist. Brilliant man. This is the guy who named oxygen. One of the founding fathers of the fucking metric system.
He was executed by guillotine during the French Revolution for adulterating tobacco. In reality, he had invented a process for curing tobacco in a way that made it more difficult for retailers to cut or modify tobacco, and the retailers really didn’t like that. He was an aristocrat prior to the revolution and, well, you can see how that ended up.
Anyway, he told his buddy to count his blinks right after his head was cut off.
His buddy counted 12.
Lavoisier was exonerated a year and a half after his death.
“La République n’a pas besoin de savants ni de chimistes; le cours de la justice ne peut être suspendu.” (“The Republic needs neither scholars nor chemists; the course of justice cannot be delayed.”) Judge Coffinhall, who sentenced Lavoisier. He himself was executed three months later
“Il ne leur a fallu qu’un moment pour faire tomber cette tête, et cent années peut-être ne suffiront pas pour en reproduire une semblable.” (“It took them only an instant to cut off this head, and one hundred years might not suffice to reproduce its like.”). Mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange on his death.
I heard that story as well; not sure what to make of it though.
If I understand it correctly, the pressure of your blood is gone right away, circling you in an unconscious state. Blinking could be a reflex of the last thing you were doing. But even if you do stay focussed, 12 seconds seems a lot better than 20 minutes. To be fair though, we don’t know how long it ‘feels’, perhaps longer than the actual seconds.
A grenade bound to the head would be more humane then perhaps. If you don’t care about the body. I’d go for that if it was offered.
That’s really the tricky thing about the death penalty. Nobody alive really knows what it feels like.
Tough to get volunteers for a controlled study, too. At least under current ethical guidelines.
High explosives, easily the least painful way to die if it’s very close to you.
You are right, that’s better.
guillotines are probably the worst pain possible. you ever hear of phantom limb pain? try your entire body
Humane methods involve putting people to sleep, not violent destruction (which includes deliberate suffocation, for any retards about)
firing squad is i think the most commonly agreed upon method, beyond what we do for (legally consented) lethal injections and MAD.
lethal injection was a mistake, electrocution was a mistake. The british canon execution is ironically, probably the best option.