Alabama completes first execution by nitrogen asphyxiation

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.

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.
  
  Front accounts of when the guillotine was used often and publicly, there was seemingly voluntary movement for up to two minutes. Imagine the hell that is searing pain from nerves cut and exposed to air while you black out screaming silent and breathless.
  Dropping a 2 ton weight made of tungsten onto someone's head is about as instant and painless as possible. We can kill better, we have had the technology.
- Is it fair to argue that this is being done by the government, not the Americans themselves?
  
  Not really, in the States it still happens in, it is very much supported by the "people".

Just the pro life crowd being inhumane. Nothing to see here.
- 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.
  
  I don't know if you can call any execution method even remotely humane.
  Even if you know it isn't going to hurt, you still know you're going to die. There's no escaping that part.
  
  People keep saying this, but it seems like this execution proved that it's not true.
- 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.
  
  Any rights a fetus has are outweighed by the mother’s right to bodily autonomy.

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.
- Yup. Morality and efficacy of the death penalty left totally aside for the moment, I'm shocked it took this long to use nitrogen instead of the clusterfuck cocktail that's tortured so many people to death.
- 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...
- There's an argument that if you make it less violent, then people will be more willing to accept execution as a valid punishment.
  That ignores, of course, that execution favorability has been dropping for 100+ years despite the methods becoming (or at least attempting to become) more humane.
- Why? If we're killing people, then who cares how they go? They won't remember. Only we will remember.
  Is this better because we feel less guilt when they don't scream?
  
  What matters in anyone's life? Why do you care if I tie your hands together, hang you by a hook in my basement, and punch you in the dick repeatedly every day for 20 years? One day you will die and won't remember so why does it matter?
- Which this isn't, in my opinion. It's just nicer for the killer and the onlookers. But it's not a dignified death. If you're gonna kill people in the name of justice, let them stand up and shoot them.
  If you can't stomach seeing or doing that, then maybe that should tell you something about the death penalty in general.
  
  I would WAY rather drift off to sleep forever than be shot to death.
  
  Yea but it's still better than the 'lets paralyze you so we feel humane and have your veins be lava for 12 hours as you disintegrate' evolved option we use.
  I'm right there with you though, how the fuck is it that we don't just put people under like before surgery, and then cut off their access to oxygen? Or a quick gunshot, or a shot with that cattle killing gun? The whole thing is so fucking stupid to me
  I'm against the death penalty personally, but the whole thing is so unbelievably absurd to me.
  Also, obligatory ayyyy Alabama represent, we made BBC News again

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.
- State sanctioned murder with torture included for free. They did it the conservative Christian way...
- I also read that they starved him first so he won't choke on the food if he vomits it out.
- It’s not the best we can do. It’s what sadistic people choose to do.
- No, the best we can do is the guillotine, but people don’t like severed heads.
  
  Or just shooting someone in the head with a high caliber rifle is probably better. Maybe it’s an urban legend, but I’ve heard the brain can survive for a few seconds after being beheaded. Best to just destroy the brain as instantly as possible.

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.

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.
- What's the professional way to kill somebody?
  
  Hunt them for sport, with live drone footage on multiple streaming portals.
  
  Slowly with a life sentence. Takes a bit though, whatever number of years they have left.
  
  Call Barry
- I don't see what's wrong.
  I used to draw blood and was pretty competent when conditions were right but I was sometimes surprised by how hard was to find someone's veins. It wasn't uncommon to try several times and have the person complain that both their arms hurt from all the needling. lol
  And as far as the method of execution goes with the respirator mask, it sounds very standard as far as the "exit bag" method goes. I'd even say that it's a step up from a plastic bag over one's head.
  
  I'm just wondering why not use one of the assisted suicide nitrogen pods.

.
- so cheap
  "We're giving out longer prison sentences and cutting taxes and budgets, make it work." - Red state legislatures every two years

- I think the Christian way involves lions. Or inadequate healthcare.
  
  Lions were how Christian’s were killed in the Roman games before whatshisass converted
- I thought that's stoning to death. The brutality is key.
  
  You have to be sinless to chuck the first stone, so the early church would drag people off and stab them in the alley. (Incidentally, this was how Jews took care of it at the time because Roman’s kind of frowned on other people getting in on it,)
  When the church became a power… they switched to burnings, hangings and other “creative” ways to torture people to death.

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.

32 minutes. Huh.
- That is a long time to know someone is murdering you.

Richest 3rd world country

So, a gas chamber? Back to 1938, are we?
- The method itself is not problematic.
  
  I'd argue any method of killing a living being against their will is problematic...
  
  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.
  
  Jesus fucking Christ

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?
- People have been known to survive bullets to the brain. I'm unsure of how big the lance is, but it may be survivable as well. There's the famous story of Phineas Gage surviving having a large iron rod accidentally driven through his skull, for example.
  
  Yeah, if we really wanted an instant-death mechanism with zero chance of any pain then we'd probably pack the victim in dynamite and vaporize them faster than nerve signals can travel.
  Unfortunately people who are pro-death-penalty are often weirdly squeamish about stuff like that.
  
  Sure, if you shoot someone in the head from 20ft or accidentally drive a rod in someone's brain that might occasionally be a survivable event. But if you aim from closeby, with the intent of ending someones life? Chances of survival are slim to none. (With a mercy shot being an option if that's the case)
  I'm vehemently against the death penalty, but there are about a thousand ways to do it 'better' than the US is doing right now (it just wouldn't be as neat/clean, which apparently is more important to the people in charge)
- Have you seen the way animals are slaughtered?
  https://dontwatch.org/
  
  I'm going to follow this advice
- Quickest and least painful is probably the guillotine. Immediate drop in blood pressure to the brain might give you a few seconds of consciousness after it happens, but you’d be in too much shock to feel any pain. You wouldn’t be slowly choking to death like this fellow.

Archive link because there is a non skippable ad block blocker.
- I didn't get any of this using uBo..
  
  I'm on an Android phone.

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.