this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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An Alabama inmate would be the test subject for the “experimental” execution method of nitrogen hypoxia, his lawyers argued, as they asked judges to deny the state’s request to carry out his death sentence using the new method.

In a Friday court filing, attorneys for Kenneth Eugene Smith asked the Alabama Supreme Court to reject the state attorney general’s request to set an execution date for Smith using the proposed new execution method. Nitrogen gas is authorized as an execution method in three states but it has never been used to put an inmate to death.

Smith’s attorneys argued the state has disclosed little information about how nitrogen executions would work, releasing only a redacted copy of the proposed protocol.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (28 children)

My position: no government should be given the power to kill its citizens under any other circumstances than to protect other people from imminent violence, i.e. the same circumstances that would qualify as self-defence by a private individual.

For the sake of argument: if you really wanted a painless and humane death what could be better than a carefully modulated dose of opioids?

I'm guessing the answer is if they get high on the way out then it isn't justice because only fear and suffering will assuage those with a vengeance boner.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (7 children)

i could never live with myself if i put anyone to death, regardless of how horrific an act they committed.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's why apparently the execution squads are told that at least one of them has blank bullets. And why two doctors do the lethal injection procedure simultaneously, but one of them is injecting saline. This way everyone can legitimately think "maybe it wasn't me who killed them". I think I read in in "Behave" by Robert M. Sapolsky.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What an idiot, he's just turned down the most humane and painless way to go. You don't notice nitrogen suffocation, because your body ignores nitrogen in the air and determines you're suffocating by a build up in CO2. Instead, you pass out in blissful hypoxia.

I'm against the death penalty as a rule of thumb, but if you have to do it then it should only be done via nitrogen suffocation. Anything else is just a refelction of the vindictiveness of the people administering or pushing for the punishment - it doesn't achieve anything, it doesn't deter future crime, it's just you getting your own back and trying to say it's ok to harm others in this instance. If the goal is to remove them from society such that they don't harm or cost society anymore, then this should be done without the kind of harmful intent that the criminal themselves demonstrated.

Tbh though I imagine this is just the guy's lawyer trying to do anything he can to delay the execution. There's some small chance that the state could do something wrong during the hearings that leads to some benefit for the prisoner. However I can only imagine the regret the prisoner might feel as he's on the receiving ends of one of the other methods.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Nitrogen Execution?

They're gonna freeze him and ~~strike~~ tap him with a ~~baseball bat~~ hammer?

Then deploy a bunch of Roombas to clean up the human icicle shards?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Jokes on them when the shards melt, and begin to reform, to continue his inexorable pursuit of John Connor

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