Alabama sets nitrogen-gas execution for man who survived botched 2022 effort
Alan Miller to go to death in September as state rejects warnings that gas-mask method represents cruel and unusual punishment
The government should never be allowed to put its own citizens to death. The government is not infallible. The government has put innocent people to death.
Regardless of the method of execution, imagine knowing the exact date and time of your death and knowing nothing you could do would stop it. That is torture, plain and simple. It should be in violation of the eighth amendment.
Consider Japan, who does it differently. Death row inmates in Japan are not told their execution dates, as they had issues with people committing suicide before they could be executed. So now they only find out with just a few hours of notice when they're going to be executed. You could be sitting in your cell, ten years into your sentence, enjoying an otherwise ordinary, quiet day in prison, only to be told that it's time to die, whether you're ready for it or not, the equipment and staff are already prepared and there's no time left to argue your case.
Honestly, I don't know which one is "better". They're both cruel in their own ways.
It's been ruled that a punishment needs to be BOTH cruel AND unusual, to qualify as a violation. One or the other is fine, as long as it's not both. Scalping someone for petty theft would be okay as long as most-everyone convicted got scalped.
In this specific case, I wouldn't call it usual and it certainly is cruel.
I would also argue that, since it is not applied evenly in any way and that only a minority of people get the death penalty, even though some people who don't get it have committed worse crimes, it is always unusual. Usual is prison for some length of time, possibly life.
I would also add that SCOTUS found it both cruel and unusual at one point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furman_v._Georgia
Then it was reinstated in Gregg v. Georgia because SCOTUS claimed that some states met some arbitrary criteria they didn't actually meet.
But also, apparently all of the available methods of execution barely work at all because of gross incompetence of the people who create the systems. That's the more important issue, here, imo. The state clearly isn't capable of serving a death sentence, nor do I expect they ever will be, so they shouldn't even have the right.
I feel like if they fuck it up your sentence it should be commuted. They shouldn't get a do-over.
It's not the case here, but fuckups tend to happen when the person is morbidly obese and therefore a vein can't be found.
Not making a point one way or another, just sharing a bit of information. This is a problem in the medical field as well.
If you survive one execution I don't think they should be allowed a do over, let him live in his cell, he earned it.
I've heard (don't know if it's true) that in the old days if you survived a hanging then you were allowed to live
I think that rule applied to the guillotine. If the blade stopped on the way down it was considered an act of god or some such.
I think there was a case somewhere that the prisoner was sentenced to death, and was executed ina fashion that didn't quite work.
But technically he did die for a minute or two before his heart restarted, and he sued to be released from prison because he technically served his sentence.
I agree. You get one try to execute, you fail? To bad.
Abolish capital punishment. Freaking primitive apes.
Cruel and unusual. Unconstitutional.
Barbaric
I can’t think of a time in human history where we weren’t barbaric.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t change but I sure a fuck don’t see it happening anytime soon.
Cruelty is the point for conservatives
Yeah, I'm pretty sure* they took a method that was supposed to give a clean painless death and deliberately implemented it in a way that would cause agony.
Edit: after further reading about this, there are other possible mechanisms that could have lead to that first one being in agony, so it is possible that the nitrogen asphyxiation method was approached and implemented in good faith while still causing agony. Though I'd say continuing to use it despite how the first one went does bring that good faith into question plus the possibility of good faith doesn't imply it wasn't in bad faith, but I no longer stand by that "pretty sure" I originally stated above.
Keep it Classy Alabama
Why all this trouble when $20 of fentenyl from the dealer outside the courthouse would do the job
Because drug companies don’t want to sell to states for the purpose of murder.
Don't they have bullets? Gassing people seems very cruel and unusual. Being shot is not unusual.
I'm not pro-death penalty, but if it's going to be done at least get the shit right.
I always wondered why they don't just drain their blood until they die. Seems like the most painless and easiest way to do it.
The norm in the US -- lethal injection -- is apparently to essentially knock someone out, then stop their heart. I don't imagine that one feels anything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_injection
In most states, the intravenous injection is a series of drugs given in a set sequence, designed to first induce unconsciousness followed by death through paralysis of respiratory muscles and/or by cardiac arrest through depolarization of cardiac muscle cells. The execution of the condemned in most states involves three separate injections (in sequential order):
- Sodium thiopental or pentobarbital: ultra-short-action barbiturate, an anesthetic agent used at a high dose that renders the person unconscious in less than 30 seconds. Depression of respiratory activity is one of the characteristic actions of this drug. Consequently, the lethal-injection doses, as described in the Sodium Thiopental section below, will—even in the absence of the following two drugs—cause death due to lack of breathing, as happens with overdoses of opioids.
- Pancuronium bromide: non-depolarizing muscle relaxant, which causes complete, fast, and sustained paralysis of the striated skeletal muscles, including the diaphragm and the rest of the respiratory muscles; this would eventually cause death by asphyxiation.
- Potassium chloride: a potassium salt, which increases the blood and cardiac concentration of potassium to stop the heart via an abnormal heartbeat and thus cause death by cardiac arrest.
I mean, a bullet to the head generally kills people very quickly and relatively painlessly.
It's about making it more palatable for observers.
Lethal injection was much, much less humane than the guillotine, but it wasn't as pretty so that's what we switched to.
