this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2024
289 points (98.7% liked)

News

23311 readers
3590 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 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Alabama is set to perform the second-ever nitrogen gas execution in the United States on Thursday.

Alan Eugene Miller, 59, was sentenced to death for the 1999 murders of his then-coworkers Lee Holdbrooks and Christoper Scott Yancy, and his former supervisor Terry Lee Jarvis.

Miller was to be executed in September 2022 via lethal injection, but it was called off after officials had trouble inserting an intravenous line to administer the fatal drugs and were concerned they would not be able to do so before the death warrant expired.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 70 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (35 children)

Per the John Oliver episode on the death penalty, there's substantial evidence that murder by nitrogen suffocation is extremely painful.

Edit: the episode and timestamp in question. Nitrogen hypoxia (edit: at least as it's being performed by these ass-backward hicks) is not painless as some commenters are suggesting. Section lasts from about 23:00 to 24:45. An excerpt from the Wikipedia article properly sourced to the Associated Press, BBC News, and the Montgomery Advertiser (local Alabama newspaper):

Though the State Attorney General said afterward that Smith's execution showed that nitrogen hypoxia was an "effective and humane method of execution", several people watching the execution reported that Smith "thrashed violently on the gurney" for several minutes, with his death reportedly occurring 10 minutes after the nitrogen was administered to the chamber. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned the use.

And to be clear, the only reason these sick fucks are using nitrogen is because it's becoming increasingly difficult to source ~~potassium chloride~~ the barbituate and paralytic for lethal injections because the optics for companies supplying them is abysmal.

[–] Crampon@lemmy.world 18 points 1 month ago (10 children)

Nitrogen has become this Schrödingers gas.

When used in executions it's extremely painful and terrible. When used for assisted Euthanasia it's calm and painless.

So what is it? Not arguing that death penalty is fine. But the debate of the method shouldn't be riddled with lies as it poisons the debate climate.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago (4 children)

In the case of the first nitrogen execution, they did dick all to vent away the carbon dioxide he was exhaling, so it eventually saturated the gas he was able to breathe and his lungs wouldn't have been able to get rid of any more. When you hold your breath, the discomfort and urge to breathe again comes from the CO2 buildup rather than the lack of oxygen.

If the exhaled gas gets vented properly, then there's no discomfort. That they didn't get this part right for the execution suggests malice, or at the very least extreme negligence because it doesn't take expertise to understand this, just a little bit of depth in knowing how suffocation works. Which you'd figure people designing and carrying out an execution would seek.

[–] chaogomu@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

A big part of it was scientific illiteracy. There was talk at the time about "protecting the prison officers from exposure to the gas".

They were treating it like a poison.

Which adds stupidity to the malice.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Assuming that "concern" was in good faith in the first place. I believe it was a bad faith pretext for not venting the gas because it's a well known fact that nitrogen makes up a significant portion of the atmosphere. If they were really worried about the nitrogen displacing enough oxygen to be dangerous, I can think of several ways to eliminate that risk even if I play along and accept that it's possible.

  1. Vent the room. Or use a large room and a fan.
  2. Place oxygen meters in the room that sound an alarm if oxygen drops below 20%.
  3. Give oxygen masks to anyone who needs to be in the room.
[–] chaogomu@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Instead they went with the stupidest and most cruel option. Make sure there's no ventilation on the mask, and that it had a tight seal before turning on the gas. A gas they were treating like a deadly poison.

And since there was no ventilation at all, there was no gas flow. There was no oxygen displacement. Just the CO2 buildup.

[–] Backlog3231@reddthat.com 1 points 1 month ago

Ah yeah that would be cruel as fuck. Are they doing anything different this time or are they going to torture someone else to death?

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (7 replies)
load more comments (31 replies)