Transcript
Alabama suffocated a man to death in a gas chamber tonight after starving him so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit as they did it. And this was deemed perfectly legal by multiple courts in the vaunted American legal system.
That’s what happens when you value institutions over people.
Link for more info: https://www.reuters.com/legal/alabama-prepares-carry-out-first-execution-by-nitrogen-asphyxiation-2024-01-25/
Plus they’re trying to say he suffocated like it was torture, no they used nitrogen specifically so it didn’t activate the body’s panic response to lack of oxygen. He just fell asleep.
Edit: he didn’t just fall asleep because he probably held his breath, according to the article, which I didnt read. In my defense I had a news app blocker on (clearly barely working)
And the reason that works is that your body doesn’t actually detect low oxygen. When you hold your breath for a long time, the sensation comes from high CO2 levels. That’s one reason that working in a hydrogen or helium airship is dangerous, because there can be a leak and you won’t even notice until passing out.
Shout out to Project Hail Mary for educating millions about this.
Also he specifically requested that they used nitrogen over other methods.
He later changed his request to death by firing squad, but I suspect that may have been a delaying tactic rather than an actual preference.
Which is so much better than injectables, which ARE torture. They get injected with a tranq first so they don’t show signs of struggle or pain when the actual death shot is given.
If fentanyl is so cheap, available, and deadly, why don’t they just use that? Probably because they want their pound of flesh.
eyewitness accounts disagree
"Smith’s spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeff Hood, who’d previously expressed concern that the method could be inhumane, witnessed the execution and described it in more graphic terms, saying it was ‘the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.’
Smith, wearing a tight-fitting mask that covered his entire face, convulsed when the gas was turned on, ‘popped up on the gurney’ repeatedly, and gasped, heaved and spat, Hood said.
‘It was absolutely horrific,’ he said."
“Smith, who was on a gurney, appeared conscious for “several minutes into the execution,” and “shook and writhed” for about two minutes after that, media witnesses said in a joint report.”
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/us/alabama-execution-nitrogen-what-we-know/index.html
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Witnesses described writhing:
They think he was holding his breath, so the CO2 concentration in his blood would have risen. Between the CO2 build up and just knowing you are about to be killed, it’s not surprising he started panicking and writhing.
That’s what people miss when touting nitrogen asphyxiation as humane. It’s only humane if the person being killed willingly gives themselves over to the process and takes nice deep breaths. If they’re not willing to die of course they’re still going to resist to the best of their abilities and try and get the mask off.
They should just fill his chamber up with nitrogen on a random day of the week while he’s asleep
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At least part of that was attributed to him holding his breath for as long as possible once they started administrating the gas.
I totally get the impulse, but breathing in nitrogen wasn’t the thing that would harm him. It’s just lack of oxygen, which holding your breath isn’t going to help.
Legal execution is fucking sickening, It’s horrifying that we did that to him.
What’s even more sickening is him stabbing that woman to death, can you imagine how much fear and pain she went through?
Yes, and 2 wrongs make a right of course. /s
Or maybe it’s about vengeance and not about paying a due to society?
It is about vengeance and also about not perpetually providing room and board for someone who lost their rights when they decided to take someone else’s rights to life away.
Edit: why would they have an inalienable right to life, even if it is a meager life in prison, if they decided they can takeinnocent people’s lives for their own deranged reasons?
That’s easy to answer. Justice is not perfect, and sooner or later you will execute an innocent person. We know this has happened in the UK, because DNA evidence proved that the person couldn’t have been there, and they would have been released had they not been executed.
Death is final and you don’t just respawn at your bed, so this is the worst possible outcome. Abolishing the death penalty avoids this terrible situation, and yes it means you keep people like this alive until their natural death, but it also maximises the chance that new evidence can be found that proves that person didn’t in fact commit the crime.
Sure I’m sympathetic to that argument. I’ve recently looked up lists of some of the people that most likely were found innocent post execution.
But what if we had stricter criteria. What about the people we are absolutely certain, with witnesses and camera footage, are guilty of murder? I’m specifically thinking of people like Nikolas Cruz, a school shooter who killed 17?
Yes, I think that should be illegal too! You’d have to be absolutely mental to want to kill someone.
“Writhing” (or maybe just convulsions that looked like writhing considering the restraints) after he no longer appeared to be conscious. NAD but my guess is this was a hypoxic seizure, an event of which he couldn’t possibly have been aware.
Edit: Assuming I’m right, and if we ever get to the point where this is proven to be a “humane” form of execution, then the convulsions could reasonably be prevented with muscle relaxing drugs the same way they’re are prevented during surgery or lethal injection… But I’d rather we just get to the point where we see the whole concept of retributive justice as inhumane.
This is pretty surprising, everything I’ve read indicates that he should indeed have been out in seconds. I wonder if the mask was a bad fit or the nitrogen wasn’t pure?
Definitely not seconds. If that were the case, simply holding your breath for a few seconds would be enough to make you pass out. That myth comes from chokeholds, which are not the same thing, and (when done properly) don’t actually stop the person from breathing. Instead, they put pressure on the arteries, to cut off the brain’s blood supply directly.
Actual asphyxiation takes several minutes, as the oxygen in your blood is slowly consumed. For nitrogen asphyxiation, you get a wicked endorphin high as your brain realizes it’s low on oxygen and releases endorphins to try and keep you awake. (Side note, this is why autoerotic asphyxiation is a thing. People do it intentionally to get that endorphin release and make orgasms more powerful.) But your sense of suffocation actually comes from high amounts of carbonic acid in your blood; Carbonic acid is from CO2, (it’s also what gives carbonated drinks that characteristic bitter taste, and is why flat soda tastes cloyingly sweet without the bitter carbonic acid to counter the sweetness.) Since the CO2 never builds up in your system, you never get the sense of suffocation. You just get that euphoric endorphin high, then you fall asleep.
Nitrogen asphyxiation is actually how I’d prefer to go out, if I got to choose. Like if I were in a lot of pain in my elder years and simply wanted to die, nitrogen asphyxiation is how I’d want to do it. But I also recognize that at that point it would be a choice, not something the state is forcing upon me. This dude was forced into it, which means there’s a much higher chance of him panicking regardless of the method.
This is actually not totally correct, take a look at @[email protected]’s thoughtful reply to my comment below!
It’s definitely not just seconds. Think about how long you can hold your breath, you’d be conscious for at least that long. You start getting brain damage after like 4 minutes without oxygen, and can live for maybe 6 minutes.
Edit: I’m wrong here! See the reply for why.
I don’t think this is quite right. Read up on “time of useful consciousness”. I think if you exhale the air in your lungs and inhale oxygen-free air you’ll be out much faster than if you just held your breath. I’m not entirely sure if total pressure matters or partial pressure matters, but I’m quite sure that there will be some similar effect. I have found some claims that the partial pressure is the major factor, so breathing pure nitrogen seems like it would incapacitate someone faster than holding their breath does, because the nitrogen is actively removing oxygen from their blood.
You are totally right. I looked into it a bit, the mistake I made was assuming that we’re more efficient at extracting oxygen from the air than we actually are. A held breath contains quite a lot of usable oxygen, which we can extract over minutes of time. Breathing in nitrogen would rapidly replace that still fairly-oxygenated air with pure nitrogen, and evidently our blood doesn’t carry more than a few seconds worth of oxygen.
Thanks for the gentle correction!
Also leaving out the fact that the executed and his lawyer both said this method was preferential to lethal injection.