Alabama, unless stopped by the courts, intends to strap Kenneth Eugene Smith to a gurney Thursday and use a gas mask to replace breathable air with nitrogen, depriving him of oxygen, in the nation’s first execution attempt with the method.
The Alabama attorney general’s office told federal appeals court judges last week that nitrogen hypoxia is “the most painless and humane method of execution known to man.” But what exactly Smith, 58, will feel after the warden switches on the gas is unknown, some doctors and critics say.
“What effect the condemned person will feel from the nitrogen gas itself, no one knows,” Dr. Jeffrey Keller, president of the American College of Correctional Physicians, wrote in an email. “This has never been done before. It is an experimental procedure.”
Keller, who was not involved in developing the Alabama protocol, said the plan is to “eliminate all of the oxygen from the air” that Smith is breathing by replacing it with nitrogen.
The human brain has a lot of cognitive biases that we have collectively decided to legislate against.
This is one of the easiest to move on from. It takes significantly more effort to justify and carry out judicial murder than it does to ban it.
We banned dueling to the death over honor centuries ago, and that’s a very similar cognitive bias. Arguably a lot less impactful on society at large too, since a duel requires 2 willing participants and by definition has no collateral consequences, but it was still deemed wrong ages ago. There is no clear argument killing someone for their alleged crimes.
Agreed. The problem is that voters and politician have that same damn DNA and those same biases.
We can totally use higher level reasoning to think through that old ass amygdala wiring. But doing that often takes work, or showing people that some other low level need is being threatened by giving into the feels of vengeance.