Alabama is seeking to become the first state to execute a prisoner by making him breathe pure nitrogen.
The Alabama attorney general’s office on Friday asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date for death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58. The court filing indicated Alabama plans to put him to death by nitrogen hypoxia, an execution method that is authorized in three states but has never been used.
Nitrogen hypoxia is caused by forcing the inmate to breathe only nitrogen, depriving them of oxygen and causing them to die. Nitrogen makes up 78% of the air inhaled by humans and is harmless when inhaled with oxygen. While proponents of the new method have theorized it would be painless, opponents have likened it to human experimentation.
Ok, so gas chambers again
Edit: my issue is not with the inhumanity, there is no way the state can humanely kill people. I’m wary that republican governments desire the kind of infrastructure that can quickly and cheaply kill many people at a time, boxcars full, in fact
No, this is far more humane. The state shouldn’t kill anyone since the rate of false convictions is significant, but doing the wrong thing in a more humane manner is better than making an innocent person suffer even more.
So it’s a chamber you fill with a gas that kills people, but it’s not a gas chamber
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A gas chamber, as the term has been used so far, is for a chamber where gasses that are not normally part of the regular atmosphere are used to kill someone in violently painful ways with a massive amount of suffering.
The atmosphere is almost 80% nitrogen, and this approach makes it 100%. It doesn’t have the parts we need, but is not introducing something new.
It is not a gas that kills people, it is the removal of the gasses we need to live without the suffering caused by an increase of co2.
I wonder if you were in there, would you appreciate the distinction?
YES.
The normal gas chamber causes obvious pain and torment as people vomit and writhe in agony. 100% nitrogen puts you to sleep. If I had an incurable disease with a lot of suffering, or sentenced to death from a false conviction, I would absolutely choose 100% nitrogen over any other method of offing myself.
Well, I hope Alabama getting industrial scale killing capabilities is worth dying on this hill
Many ways of killing people can be done on big scale. Do you have some specific information about Alabama planning to make it large scale or are you worried because it includes gas?
“Industrial scale” is something you made up in this conversation. That was not done in good faith. Have a good day.
What the fuck are you even talking about? Do you think they are going to implement industrial levels of death penalties just because they found a less horrific way to kill people?