Why not hanging for carrying out the death penalty?

[W.D.Clinger]

The condemned man's spiritual advisor was a Reverend Jeff Hood. Hood and his attorney sent a letter to the Alabama prison system stating

Nitrogen hypoxia is a novel execution method. Use of this deadly gas, unlike lethal injection, poses a high risk of exposure to all bystanders.​

History shall record that all bystanders were indeed exposed to nitrogen gas during the execution.

 

[Chanakya]

The condemned man's spiritual advisor was a Reverend Jeff Hood. Hood and his attorney sent a letter to the Alabama prison system stating

Nitrogen hypoxia is a novel execution method. Use of this deadly gas, unlike lethal injection, poses a high risk of exposure to all bystanders.​

History shall record that all bystanders were indeed exposed to nitrogen gas during the execution.

Even funnier than that objection is the fact that this guy, who killed because a pastor paid him to, who then got caught, and who didn't even get his money from the pastor, would then keep on a "Reverend" as "spiritual advisor".

eta: On the other hand, maybe that is exactly why he kept him on, as someone as dodgy as a lawyer, but whose words might be taken more sympathetically. And maybe that's why the Reverend made that silly objection, to try to somehow anyhow maybe wangle a reprieve.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

A very cost effective method might be to simply shackle the guy and let the populace or the condemned's victim's next of kin/representatives take care of business as they feel is appropriate. Wouldn't cost the state a nickel, except for clean up.

Might not have the intended effect. If someone killed my step-mother...

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The air around you is 78% nitrogen. It doesn't kill you, nor does it make you "go ha-ha."

People were no doubt thinking of nitrous oxide.

Letting people breathe air in and out that lacks oxygen is the idea. It just so happens 'air' is as you say mostly nitrogen. Room air is ~21% oxygen.

I think taking the O2 out of what people are breathing might not be as painless as is being proposed. Seems to me people would start to feel starved for O2 regardless if they are moving air in and out of their lungs. But if it is quick enough and we are sure they couldn't have been falsely convicted, who cares.

OTOH we know people who die from CO poisoning fall asleep and then die, except that it takes a bit longer. I'm not sure why this isn't used.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Your stigmata is not fooling anybody.

But back to killing people in a white sterile room. Still going with heroin OD.

The problem isn't acquiring the drugs, though I'd go with cheaper and more easily obtained confiscated fentanyl, the problem is none of these phlebotomists want to be executioners. Same with physicians and nurses, they don't want to start the IV access.

Once you have a line in, the options are endless.

So a gas seems like the better option. You don't need skill to restrain a person and put a gas mask on them.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It works just fine, as demonstrated by those states that allow death with dignity. Someone mentioned earlier (SkepticGinger, I think?) that the medical profession as a whole has declined to participate in executions, and that seems to be the reasoning for why we don't employ that same method.

Yes, that was me.

It just dawned on me though, the new method is if you can't get a line in and it's an emergency, you jam a needle into the leg bone. Not sure if that's just for kids. Maybe someone can look it up.

I'm good with the gas mask option. I'm not sure nitrogen is the optimal choice but there are other options. Maybe they should go back to cyanide gas.

 

[Darat]

The problem isn't acquiring the drugs, though I'd go with cheaper and more easily obtained confiscated fentanyl, the problem is none of these phlebotomists want to be executioners. Same with physicians and nurses, they don't want to start the IV access.

Once you have a line in, the options are endless.

So a gas seems like the better option. You don't need skill to restrain a person and put a gas mask on them.

A "problem" is very much they can't obtain the drugs. There are reams of articles about it, states have legislated about it, pharmaceutical companies have made it clear they will not provide drugs for executions.

 

[KDLarsen]

Both are issues for their own reasons. If a medical professional was available to anaesthetize the condemned, it would make the nitrogen gas issue a slam dunk, as the prisoner wouldn't be aware that they were breathing in their own death, thus without doubt removing the cruel part of their execution.

 

[erwinl]

Both are issues for their own reasons. If a medical professional was available to anaesthetize the condemned, it would make the nitrogen gas issue a slam dunk, as the prisoner wouldn't be aware that they were breathing in their own death, thus without doubt removing the cruel part of their execution.

Yes,
But you then introduce the cruel part, where the condemned is strapped in and the professional comes nearer with the needle and sticks it into the arm of the condemned.

If the awareness that you will breath in your own death is a cruel part of the execution, the other method certainly is even more.

 

[Darat]

Both are issues for their own reasons. If a medical professional was available to anaesthetize the condemned, it would make the nitrogen gas issue a slam dunk, as the prisoner wouldn't be aware that they were breathing in their own death, thus without doubt removing the cruel part of their execution.

This takes me back to my opening post - why all these weird and whacky ideas when we have known methods? There seems to be a push for something that appears to be, not too sure how to describe it - something "medical" or "scientific"?

(Looks like the last hanging in the USA was in the late 1990s - didn't go well - the prisoner was decapitated. But that's just shoddy workmanship!)

 

[GlennB]

People were no doubt thinking of nitrous oxide.

Letting people breathe air in and out that lacks oxygen is the idea. It just so happens 'air' is as you say mostly nitrogen. Room air is ~21% oxygen.

I think taking the O2 out of what people are breathing might not be as painless as is being proposed. Seems to me people would start to feel starved for O2 regardless if they are moving air in and out of their lungs. But if it is quick enough and we are sure they couldn't have been falsely convicted, who cares.

OTOH we know people who die from CO poisoning fall asleep and then die, except that it takes a bit longer. I'm not sure why this isn't used.

Years back a Brit, Dr Jonathan Miller^WP (polymath, clever dick in spades ) had a popular science/medicine program on tv, where he demonstrated the effects.

He was in a lab on an exercise bike and breathing a 'closed circuit' of air through a mouthpiece. The CO2 was scrubbed out of the system as it circulated, while ECG and other medical kit measured his vital signs.

He pedalled away, getting more and more dopey and with his vital signs becoming erratic. His team stepped in and got him off and fed him oxygen until he recovered.

He showed no personal outward signs of distress whatsoever and confirmed that he hadn't felt in any way distressed, yet had he been left on the equipment he would have died.

Breathing nitrogen or some other inert gas until you die is painless and stress-free, except that with an execution the stress lies in the fact that the victim knows they are about to die.

 

[zooterkin]

<snip>

Breathing nitrogen or some other inert gas until you die is painless and stress-free, except that with an execution the stress lies in the fact that the victim knows they are about to die.

That would seem to be the problem, assuming that the nitrogen was being correctly administered, this time:

Marty Roney of the Montgomery Advertiser reported that between 7.57pm local time and 8.01pm “Smith writhed and convulsed on the gurney. He took deep breaths, his body shaking violently with his eyes rolling in the back of his head.”

Roney’s report continued: “Smith clenched his fists, his legs shook … He seemed to be gasping for air. The gurney shook several times.”

Rev. Jeff Hood, Smith’s spiritual adviser, was at Smith’s side for the execution, and said prison officials in the room “were visibly surprised at how bad this thing went.”

“What we saw was minutes of someone struggling for their life,” Hood said.

“It appeared that Smith was holding his breath as long as he could,” Alabama corrections commissioner John Hamm later told a press conference.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/25/alabama-executes-kenneth-smith-nitrogen-gas

 

[JoeMorgue]

I feel like "Knowing you are going to die is stressful" is the sort of thing we can't really fix.

As I said earlier (and again speaking only in the context of the question of a "humane execution" and not broader ethical or moral questions) you can't have an execution method that depends on the condemned being an active participant in their own death.

A person cannot like squeeze their veins shut to stop a lethal injection cocktail or just concentrate really hard and stop the electricity from the electric chair from flowing through their body but they can hold their breath as long as they can.

 

[GlennB]

That would seem to be the problem, assuming that the nitrogen was being correctly administered, this time:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/25/alabama-executes-kenneth-smith-nitrogen-gas

Yep. Seems to me that the whole 'ceremony' some insist on for an execution is the main problem.

So, spring it on the convict unexpectedly? Put them in a suitable cell well before the announced execution date. Provide food, drink and sleeping pills as appropriate then, days before the date they're expecting to die, switch the cell's ventilation system to a lethal nitrogen supply. They die in their sleep and the outside world is kept ignorant of this ruse.

But, hey, that's not dramatic enough to satisfy some ghouls, is it?

 

[Ziggurat]

I think taking the O2 out of what people are breathing might not be as painless as is being proposed. Seems to me people would start to feel starved for O2 regardless if they are moving air in and out of their lungs.

The whole reason this works is that your body doesn’t have any oxygen sensor. It has CO₂ sensors. You don’t react to a lack of oxygen, but to a buildup of CO₂. Normally the lack of oxygen goes hand in hand with CO₂ buildup. But if you allow oxygen-free air to move in and out of your lungs, then CO₂ doesn’t build up and you don’t feel anything.

 

[zooterkin]

Yep. Seems to me that the whole 'ceremony' some insist on for an execution is the main problem.

So, spring it on the convict unexpectedly? Put them in a suitable cell well before the announced execution date. Provide food, drink and sleeping pills as appropriate then, days before the date they're expecting to die, switch the cell's ventilation system to a lethal nitrogen supply. They die in their sleep and the outside world is kept ignorant of this ruse.

But, hey, that's not dramatic enough to satisfy some ghouls, is it?

Indeed. To be honest, I was surprised to find they were using a mask, rather than a room, something like what you described.

 

[JoeMorgue]

"Gas chambers" have unpleasant connotations historically speaking and a LOT of this is PR.

ETA: To be clear I'm not saying that's a good, logical, sane or reasonable excuse, but I do think it is in there. Like I said we've spent the last few decades trying to make executions look like anesthesia.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Yep. Seems to me that the whole 'ceremony' some insist on for an execution is the main problem.

So, spring it on the convict unexpectedly? Put them in a suitable cell well before the announced execution date. Provide food, drink and sleeping pills as appropriate then, days before the date they're expecting to die, switch the cell's ventilation system to a lethal nitrogen supply. They die in their sleep and the outside world is kept ignorant of this ruse.

But, hey, that's not dramatic enough to satisfy some ghouls, is it?

Some people would prefer to have a dramatic, ceremonial exit. I would definitely prefer to be executed by hanging than to do something antimedical to my breathing or my blood while strapped down. Forced immobility is a form of torture in itself, and some people find it far more horrific the notion of undergoing internal damage from poisons or being deprived of air than to have a quick drop and broken neck. I would rather die from an external force causing a traumatic physical injury than die from an internal corruption of my biological systems.

I think those condemned to death should get a choice of execution methods from a set of several proven to work.

 

[theprestige]

There's a school of thought which holds that execution must be as brutal and dehumanizing for the executioner as the original murder was for the murderer. Sometimes it's couched as something like, let the people who are in favor of the death penalty carry out the execution, see how they like it then. This is an argument by people who are against the death penalty.

I do not subscribe to that school of thought. As someone in favor of the death penalty, I want the execution to be as humane as possible, not only for the convicted, but for the executioner. If that means making it look more like anaesthesia, that's fine with me.

 

[JoeMorgue]

IIRC correctly one of (many) reasons we stopped using firing squads is the image that it was letting the condemned go out in a dramatic, blaze of glory, for lack of a better term "cool" fashion.

I don't think the people who still want the death penalty are too big on caring about the condemned's opinion of how cool their death is.