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.
While I abhor the death penalty, the science is pretty solid on nitrogen being more humane from a medical perspective. What gives someone the feeling of suffocation is excessive CO2, not the lack of oxygen.
It’s actually a problem with closed-circuit rebreathers. If the CO2 scrubber keeps working but the Oxygen tank runs empty, the person on the rebreather will feel fine until they pass out.
The worst thing for the victim in the execution will be the psychological horror from wearing the mask and knowledge of what’s happening. If they’re goikg to do this, they should just change out the air in a sealed chamber while the victim sleeps.
The problem is that we don’t have a good way to measure if something is humane. They observe, they see the victim not doing anything like thrashing about or screaming, they assume everything is okay.
But all that tells us is that the person is unable to show any suffering. Not that they’re not suffering.
What we really need is to study where people get mostly suffocated by nitrogen, but then brought back, and ask them how it felt.
That’s essentially what the rebreather problem demonstrates.
And we’ve known forever that it’s CO2 that gives the sensation of suffocation.
It’s why hyperventilating before freediving is so dangerous. People expel all the CO2 in their system to reduce the feeling of air starvation and pass out underwater without realizing they’re about to drown.
Well thanks. That’s a new horrifying fear to have.
Don’t hyperventilate before freediving and it’s not a problem.
There’s actually a bunch of information on it from industrial accidents and workers not following protocols. Critics tend to ignore it because their goal is to sway public opinion against execution in general.
TBH, in theory I wouldn’t be against execution but our justice system is SO fallible I don’t trust it ever.
Uh, this has been done to a certain extent? Any person who almost suffocated by stupidly inhaling helium out of a balloon can tell you about their experience. It’s usually them asking “What did just happen? Did I pass out?!”
Nitrogen isn’t helium ofc. But yes, let’s do that with nitrogen in a controlled setting.
It’s been done, in industrial accidents and other cases, but helium is probably more common for average people to experience. Both gasses are inert (have no effect on our biology) and displace oxygen.
P.S. I believe there’s even some companies that offer hypoxia training for pilots and mountain climbers using increased nitrogen instead of reduced pressure. (Such training helps pilots recognize the warning signs so they can activate supplementary oxygen.) This lets them do it without a special pressure chamber, and a quicker recovery to standard atmosphere if someone has a problem.
We breath in nitrogen 24/7. Air is about 78% nitrogen.