751
Kenneth Smith ‘struggled for life’ for 22 minutes in Alabama nitrogen gas execution: Updates
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
751 points (93.4% liked)
News
23648 readers
2408 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
How on earth did they fuck this up? The point is to starve the person of oxygen by replacing his air supply sith pure nitrogen. Either he's an accomplished free-diver and held his breath for 21 minutes, or they bodged it.
Also, how about you stop giving the state the power to kill people? Especially when the victim's family said they were forgiven "years ago". Whole thing is disgusting
It sounds to me like they didn't account for the oxygen in his lungs. They put a fucking mask on him and filled it with pure nitrogen, but it was probably a closed system so his own breath had nowhere to go. Most of the oxygen that goes to your lungs is not absorbed, and you have breathe in your own breath for a while before the CO2 content makes it poisonous.
That's the wrong fucking way to do it.
CO2 poisoning is fucking brutal. Your brain recognizes that you can't expell carbon dioxide, and your body panics. You'll thrash about and struggle to breathe fresh air, even though you still have lots of oxygen in your lungs and in your blood stream.
The whole point of Nitrogen is that your body doesn't realize it's not getting Oxygen, and you slowly lose consciousness without any panic or reflex. To do that, you have to pump nitrogen into a chamber and then filter out oxygen and carbon dioxide. The chamber can be the size of a mask, but a sealed box would be less likely to leak. As you breathe, the oxygen and the carbon dioxide are continuously scrubbed from the air.
Basically, this guy was tortured to death. If you've ever had the sensation of being under water too long, and you have that shocking dull pain in your chest and a headache, it's like that but for 23 minutes until you die.
Ah, I didn't read in the article that they used a mask. What a cruel / incompetent thing to do
A CPAP mask could obtain a similar effect. It forms a perfect seal on the face with a one way valve for exhalation. As long as the mask is piped to a bottle of pure nitrogen you'd quickly remove all oxygen from your air supply and be out like a light in no time
But doesn't that just go over the nose? I'm not sure. Plus, the seal would have to be air-tight. A cpap might be snug to the skin, but you could break the seal by moving your cheeks around.
You're right, there are multiple types of CPAP mask. I was writing about full face ones like these. In the cheapo ones we stock on my ambulance the seal around the mask is a silicone-ish tubing that clings to the skin very well.
For CPAP or BiPAP to be effective (and not piss off your ventilator), the circuit needs to be leak free. I've had full conversations with people on BiPAP before without my vent throwing any alarms. They have an expiratory valve so you can breathe out, but no outside air gets in. You're fed solely by the air getting pumped out of the vent. These masks would be very easy to set up for pure nitrogen by using trach mask tubing (the ports are the same size) and a tank of nitrogen set up to an O2 regulator. Ditch the dilutor for one that's closed off. Couldn't tell you what they're called but I've used them before and know they exist. This whole setup could be had for less than $50 if you're purchasing wholesale
This is almost exactly what a good friend of mine used to kill himself eight years ago this week. His thought process was that it would be a painless death. I hope he was right.
I'm sorry for your loss and if it's any reassurance, that's about as quick and painless he could've managed. It's never easy to lose someone but hopefully knowing that will make* things a little easier. I wish you the best
Thanks, I appreciate it.
The obvious outcome is someone trying to fight against being killed in whatever way they can. If you know that you won't get oxygen, the obvious response is to hold your breath.
This would work humanely for someone who wants to die, but as a method of execution is is torture like all the rest.
No US citizen should be surprised that Alabama of all places fucked this up, lol. My personal opinion is that it all started when religion got involved with the execution process
Gonna have to say that a botch job could have happened anywhere, because medical professionals aren't involved in executions, flawed executions have happened in many states many times, geography doesn't have much to do with that, it's the nature of state sanctioned murder sadly.
Oh, they botched it alright.
They used a mask. Not a sealed chamber like the suicide pods. So presumably it wasn't completely air tight.
Ah, I didn't read in the article that they used a mask. What a cruel / incompetent thing to do
Need less nitrogen for a mask so it saves money!
-some jackass