Alabama executes Kenneth Smith using untested method of nitrogen gas | Hacker News Reader

Alabama executes Kenneth Smith using untested method of nitrogen gas

theguardian.com

19 pointswhycome20 comments

I thought the general understanding of inert gas asphyxia was that it was painless as gasses like nitrogen don't trigger the hypercapnic alarm response, which in humans arises mostly from blood carbon dioxide levels rising. This report makes it sound like that isn't the case. Does anyone know why?

It seems to me that in terms of executions, if the goal is doing it humanely as possible, the goal should be to do it as quickly as possible.

In light of that goal, it seems like a firing squad or even a guillotine would be a better choice? From the article, it sounds like this process drew things out much longer than it really should have.

That's what they say the goal is. But I suspect their main concern is to make sure it's not gruesome for those in attendance including the media. Guillotine would be the quickest way of conducting the execution but it would also quickly end executions.

It also needs to be a method that isn’t pharmacologically complicated, because manufacturers and pharmacists refuse to be complicit in this today. That’s the main reason, and also a reason Alabama has botched so many executions in recent years with experimental drugs and untrained executioners.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9930870/

> Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who along with two other liberal justices dissented, wrote: “Having failed to kill Smith on its first attempt, Alabama has selected him as its ‘guinea pig’ to test a method of execution never attempted before. The world is watching.”

Truly barbaric, even without the earlier failed attempt. If this wasn't cruel and unusual punishment I'm struggling to know what is.

Vets refuse to use it on animals, exactly because it's so cruel.

Some animals are sensitive to oxygen deprivation. Humans are not.

Ask why you weren't told this.

Is death ever not barbaric? Death is death, and this man earned the right to be put to death.

Despite the jury returning a verdict of 11 to 1 that his life should be spared, but the judge applied a since-repealed Alabama statute to override the jury, which was found to be unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court.

Seriously, the US system is a mess that this was allowed to happen. Along with the US only a few counties still have the death penalty, and many of them haven't done one for >20 years, meaning it is effectively gone.

Has anyone here read the John Grisham novel "The Chamber"!

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