Ohio politicians may be poised to consider whether the state might break its unofficial moratorium on the death penalty by following Alabama in using nitrogen gas to execute inmates.
Ohio hasn’t executed anyone since 2018. In 2020, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine declared lethal injection “no longer an option,” citing a federal judge’s ruling that the protocol could cause inmates “severe pain and needless suffering.”
Republican state Attorney General Dave Yost scheduled a news conference Tuesday to discuss “next steps to kickstart” Ohio’s capital punishment system. He has expressed support for the nitrogen gas method used for the first time in Alabama last week, when convicted murderer Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, was put to death with nitrogen gas administered through a face mask to deprive him of oxygen.
My life experience has been the opposite. When I was in my 20’s and even my early 30’s, I very likely would have agreed with you; I probably would have even argued against the death penalty when I was a young adult. The older I get, the more I realize that some human beings are just pure trash, and they should be treated as such. Everyone should be afforded human rights, and everyone should be treated with kindness and respect, until the point that their actions cause harm to others.
As part of your own personal development, I hope that at some point you learn to take off the rose-colored glasses that you use to look at humanity and realize that while the world can be a beautiful place, it can also be a cesspool, and that punishing the people who actively try to make the world into a cesspool is simply the right thing to do.