Alabama Plans to Carry out First Nitrogen Gas Execution. How Will it Work and What Are the Risks?

[mountaineer]

Alabama Plans to Carry out First Nitrogen Gas Execution. How Will it Work and What Are the Risks?
Sunday, 21 January 2024 09:15 AM EST
Newsmax

Alabama is preparing to use a new method of execution: nitrogen gas.

Kenneth Eugene Smith, who survived the state’s previous attempt to put him to death by lethal injection in 2022, is scheduled to be put to death Thursday by nitrogen hypoxia. If carried out, it would the first new method of execution since lethal injection was introduced in 1982.

The state maintains that nitrogen gas will cause unconsciousness quickly but critics have likened the never-used method of execution to human experimentation.

Nitrogen hypoxia execution would cause death by forcing the inmate to breathe pure nitrogen, depriving him or her of the oxygen needed to maintain bodily functions. ...

[Hoodat]

I am amazed that no one thought of this sooner.  Opponents of course will lobby against it because O₂ deprivation can be deadly.

[mountaineer]

Alabama inmate asks federal appeals court to block first-ever execution by nitrogen gas
Story by By KIM CHANDLER, Associated Press 
Jan. 19, 2024

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — An attorney for an Alabama inmate set to be the nation's first person ever put to death by nitrogen gas asked a federal appeals court Friday to block the upcoming execution using the “untested methods.”

Kenneth Smith, 58, is scheduled to be executed Thursday, when a respirator-type mask will be put on his face to replace his breathing air with pure nitrogen — depriving him of the oxygen needed to stay alive. Three states — Alabama, Oklahoma and Mississippi — have authorized nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method, but no state has previously attempted to use it.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard diverging descriptions of the humaneness and potential risks of the proposed method in Smith's appeal of a federal judge’s Jan. 10 decision to let the execution go forward. The three judges on the panel asked questions about the proposed method, including claims that it could cause Smith to choke to death on his own vomit, but did not indicate when they will rule. ...

Some states are looking for new ways to execute inmates because the drugs used in lethal injections, the most common execution method in the United States, are increasingly difficult to find. ...

AP via MSN

[LMAO]

Isn't this what animal services uses to dispose of unwanted cats/dogs?

I was just gonna type that and I saw your post

I guess that’s my understanding unless somebody knows different

[GtHawk]

Hey throw a bone to the bleeding hearts and use Nitrous Oxide, that way the killers could laugh their way to unconsciousness and death, kind a like party to hell

[The_Reader_David]

The virtue of nitrogen hypoxia is that unlike being suffocated in more normal ways (e.g. a pillow over the face or strangulation) it does not cause CO2 to build up in the bloodstream, and the horrible sensations associated with not being able to breath are part of the body's reaction to CO2 building up in the bloodstream. It should, thus, be a painless death even before the condemned convict loses consciousness.

[Fishrrman]

Probably the most "humane" form of "execution" possible.

Nothing different than this:


What is it? See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarco_pod

EDIT:
Fishrrman prediction:
In ten years, you'll be able to order these things from amazon...

[GtHawk]

Looks like it doubles as a casket.

Looks like the base could deploy wheels and drive the 'customer' to the nearest mortuary, kinda like the Domino's robotic pizza delivery

[Fishrrman]

Actually, the Sarco pod WAS originally designed to be a "burial vessel" as well as the device for one's own demise. However, that idea was dropped not long after introduction (I'm going to GUESS that it might be considered "wasteful of resources" to use it that way...).

[GtHawk]

Actually, the Sarco pod WAS originally designed to be a "burial vessel" as well as the device for one's own demise. However, that idea was dropped not long after introduction (I'm going to GUESS that it might be considered "wasteful of resources" to use it that way...).

Well they say it's coffin sized but maybe cemeteries balked at allowing them as unproven even if they were going into a concrete vault.

[mountaineer]

What is nitrogen hypoxia? Alabama execution to proceed with unprecedented, controversial method
By Emily Mae Czachor
January 23, 2024 / 11:51 AM EST / CBS News

A death row inmate in Alabama is scheduled to be executed Thursday by nitrogen hypoxia, a controversial and untested method that has prompted legal pushback and public scrutiny from critics within the United States and abroad.

Kenneth Eugene Smith, the condemned inmate, would be the first to die this way if the execution proceeds as planned. Smith was convicted in the 1988 killing of a pastor's wife as part of a murder-for-hire scheme and has been imprisoned for decades in Alabama. He already survived a botched lethal injection in November 2022 — one of four in Alabama since 2018, which was the same year the state authorized the use of nitrogen hypoxia in the death chamber. It is among three states, along with Oklahoma and Mississippi, that technically permit the method as an alternative in the death chamber since lethal injections in recent years have become harder to get.  ...

A group of U.N. consultants raised concerns about the execution several weeks ago, saying "that nitrogen hypoxia would result in a painful and humiliating death." Ravina Shamdasani, the spokesperson for Volker Türk, who is the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, later warned that execution by nitrogen asphyxiation "could amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment under international human rights law."  ...

You know what isn't untested or degrading? Firing squad.

[Cyber Liberty]

Yeah but it's bloody and no one seems to like that.

Then use rope and a scaffold.

[Wingnut]

Looks like it doubles as a casket.

It looks like that thing they shot Spock dead body out into space.

[bigheadfred]

It looks like that thing they shot Spock dead body out into space.

I think that was a photon torpedo casing.

[Wingnut]

I think that was a photon torpedo casing.

Close enough!   

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Alabama should just use whatever is the method "they" use for abortions, no?

[GtHawk]

Alabama should just use whatever is the method "they" use for abortions, no?

That's gonna be one hell of vacuum! Maybe they can get Dyson on it.

[Hoodat]

What is nitrogen hypoxia? Alabama execution to proceed with unprecedented, controversial method
By Emily Mae Czachor
January 23, 2024 / 11:51 AM EST / CBS News You know what isn't untested or degrading? Firing squad.

If I was on death row, that is how I would want to go.

[mountaineer]

Tom Fitton
@TomFitton
JUSTICE: Alabama executes Kenneth Eugene Smith by new nitrogen gas method for 1988 murder of pastor’s wife
"Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey confirms the state has executed Kenneth Smith. 'On March 18, 1988, 45-year-old Elizabeth Sennett’s life was brutally taken from her by Kenneth Eugene Smith. After more than 30 years and attempt after attempt to game the system, Mr. Smith has answered for his horrendous crimes....'"

https://t.co/VPPnpG11Dz

[Polly Ticks]

Tom Fitton
@TomFitton
JUSTICE: Alabama executes Kenneth Eugene Smith by new nitrogen gas method for 1988 murder of pastor’s wife
"Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey confirms the state has executed Kenneth Smith. 'On March 18, 1988, 45-year-old Elizabeth Sennett’s life was brutally taken from her by Kenneth Eugene Smith. After more than 30 years and attempt after attempt to game the system, Mr. Smith has answered for his horrendous crimes....'"

https://t.co/VPPnpG11Dz

Good article, thanks.

Smith and his spiritual advisor, the Rev. Jeff Hood, had issued this joint statement prior to the execution: “The eyes of the world are on this impending moral apocalypse. Our prayer is that people will not turn their heads. We simply cannot normalize the suffocation of each other.”

But apparently it is NOT a moral apocalypse to beat and stab someone to death.  It's ok to normalize that part.   

[Gefn]

Of course on the morning news shows they reported on what a horrible death this is.   

It sounds like he did not go gently into that good night. I would think the only "good" death is to go in your sleep -

Or if I feel really silly, like VP Rockefeller supposedly  went.

[GtHawk]

Of course on the morning news shows they reported on what a horrible death this is.   

Maybe the morning news shows and their bleeding hearts should be telling all potential murders to stay the hell out of Alabama so they don't get the same treatment. But thirty years after sentencing? That's obscene, there is no way that there were any legitimate reasons for this cancer on humanity to keep living that long.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Dying from opiod overdose has always struck me as probably the best way to die... hence why so many people accidentally overdose on opiates.

[mountaineer]

We simply cannot normalize the suffocation of each other.”

How 'bout we normalize JUSTICE?

[Wingnut]

Death sentence execution's should be more inhumane.