this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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Alabama is seeking to become the first state to execute a prisoner by making him breathe pure nitrogen.

The Alabama attorney general’s office on Friday asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date for death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58. The court filing indicated Alabama plans to put him to death by nitrogen hypoxia, an execution method that is authorized in three states but has never been used.

Nitrogen hypoxia is caused by forcing the inmate to breathe only nitrogen, depriving them of oxygen and causing them to die. Nitrogen makes up 78% of the air inhaled by humans and is harmless when inhaled with oxygen. While proponents of the new method have theorized it would be painless, opponents have likened it to human experimentation.

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[–] flossdaily@lemmy.world 219 points 1 year ago (33 children)

That's a pretty good way to go, apparently.

But there have been an absolutely breathtaking number of death row cases that have been overturned due to new evidence that had exonerated the condemned.

It seems pretty clear that the state is doing a very crappy job of determining guilt, and therefore shouldn't be handing down such a permanent sentence.

[–] HonoraryMancunian@lemmy.world 55 points 1 year ago

breathtaking

Heh

[–] madcaesar@lemmy.world 42 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I used to fully pro death penalty, especially for some of the sick fucks...

But then I learned about all the false convictions, some COERCED by the fucking police, and since then I'm 100% against the death penalty.

The satisfaction I get from a heinous killer getting killed, does not outweigh the horror I feel for even one innocent life being taken by the state.

[–] insomniac@sh.itjust.works 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s also cheaper to keep people in jail forever than put them to death because of all the appeals. And despite being more careful, we still get it wrong.

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[–] LEDZeppelin@lemmy.world 127 points 1 year ago (3 children)
[–] Vaggumon@lemm.ee 33 points 1 year ago

Yeah, that's a lie, always has been.

[–] CaptObvious@literature.cafe 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They wouldn’t know “pro-life” if it bit them on the ass. They’re simply pro-birth. Literally everything else about the GOP platform is anti-life.

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[–] idunnololz@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

And here I am on Life Lite like a pleb.

[–] Leviathan@lemmy.world 93 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Small government folks sure are horny about giving their government the power to murder them.

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[–] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 90 points 1 year ago (2 children)

FWIW, nitrogen asphyxiation is one of the methods that's preferred by advocates of assisted suicide. Done correctly--by which I mean in a way that doesn't allow a buildup of CO2 in your bloodstream--it's not only painless but gives you a mild high. The proper way to do it is with something like a BiPAP, where the air that's being piped in is pure nitrogen, and the CO2 is all being removed immediately so you aren't breathing it back in. Without a buildup of CO2 in your bloodstream, your brain doesn't recognize that you're suffocating.

Have you ever breathed in helium from a balloon and gotten lightheaded? It's about like that.

I'm in favor of the death penalty in very, very rare cases--and this is not one where I would support it--and this is one of the surest, least barbaric ways to execute someone.

[–] squaresinger@feddit.de 26 points 1 year ago

When I was ~10 I attended a wedding. Me and the other kids where tasked to fill balloons with helium and we did so without supervision. Naturally, we breathed some helium in and talked in funny voices.

I then had the bright idea to try to breathe as many of these balloons without normal air in between.

After the third of these, I lost conciousness. To me it felt as if I was gone for maybe half an hour. I was basically dreaming weird stuff. Luckily I stayed in my seat during that time and didn't fall over or something. Noone of the others noticed anything, so it couldn't have been that long. Maybe a few seconds in reality.

[–] PetDinosaurs@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Let's tighten this up a bit.

Inert gas asphyxiation is very much a great way to go, but it's basically symptomless until after you lose consciousness.

You don't get high. The "high" people get is when they are choked out. I'm not really sure on the mechanism of that, though. You don't get lightheaded. The lightheadedness is from the blood oxygen levels increasing.

This is why it's very dangerous to enter enclosed spaces. You simply don't know you're about to die until it's too late. Plus, people come in to try to rescue you and succumb as well.

Anyway, lots of people have this experience. It's a common part of training for rebreathers for use in scuba diving.

As far as good ways to die, inert gas asphyxiation is up there with "proper" lethal injection (i.e. with a commercial euthanasia drug), opiate overdose, or just anesthetizing the being and doing whatever gets the job done.

[–] FlowVoid@midwest.social 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Nitrogen can cause a "high" (aka nitrogen narcosis), but this effect only occurs at high pressures. So it is only a practical concern for divers, because they have to breathe high pressure air. Some divers replace the nitrogen in their tanks with other gases to avoid it.

It is unrelated to asphyxiation, and can occur even when the lungs are properly exchanging oxygen and CO2. It is a poorly understood direct interaction between high pressure nitrogen and the brain that does not occur at atmospheric pressure.

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[–] alvvayson@lemmy.world 79 points 1 year ago (16 children)

If ever I would need to be killed, this would be my preferred method of leaving the earth.

Happy to see them try it, even though I am against executing people.

With hypoxia, you get euphoria prior to death. No suffering, no pain, just a little high to send you off this earth.

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[–] c0mput0r@kbin.social 58 points 1 year ago (11 children)

This is how I would want to go. Look up BBC Horizon 2008 How to Kill a Human Being. Explains everything you need to know. Seems like states don't want to do it because people wouldn't suffer during execution. Maybe things have changed since then.

[–] Brickhead92@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

Is it really an execution if there is no suffering? /s

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[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 56 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Folks who are confused by this, your body doesn't detect when you're low on oxygen, only when you have too much carbon dioxide. That's why exhaling while holding your breath helps you hold your breath longer (to an extent). Nitrogen doesn't caused the sensation of suffocating while still depriving you of oxygen.

I disagree with capital punishment but have always wondered about this for stuff like assisted suicide.

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[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 45 points 1 year ago (16 children)

I'm definitely against the death penalty but if they're gonna do it anyway this seems like one of the better options

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[–] Mowcherie@lemmy.world 38 points 1 year ago (19 children)

I get that it is 'humane,' but I get scared when I see humans developing and organizing highly efficient ways to exterminate humans, such as gas chambers.

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[–] GiddyGap@lemm.ee 34 points 1 year ago (13 children)

Let him rot in prison.

ABOLISH CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

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[–] reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Watching the murder states scramble for new ways to murder as they run out of unethical people willing to sell them murder supplies has been interesting.

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[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (13 children)

Surgical tech here... why not just use Propofol? It's the shit we use to put people to sleep for surgery.

It kicks in FAST - when the anesthesiologist pushes that stuff, it can literally take like 5-10 seconds for the patients to go unconscious.

So... for the death penalty, hit em with the normal dosage to put them to sleep, then once they're confirmed unconscious, push the rest of the bottle... or a liter of gasoline... or chuck em out the window; it doesn't matter, as they'll be 100% unaware of the actual method of death.

Edit - turns out there's a lot of good reasons we don't just use Propofol - see comments below. Thanks for the insight, all!

[–] livus@kbin.social 54 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The real answer is that the makers of Propofol specifically don't want you to use it to kill people.

Furthermore, if the US does use Propofol to execute anyone it will likely find itself suffering a shortage of Propofol to use as an anaesthetic in future.

@vithigar

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Because the people selling it don’t want to deal with the association with lethal injections

[–] lgmjon64@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

They used to use thiopental, which is similar to propofol, with similar onset, both as an anesthesic and for lethal injection. Manufacturers stopped producing it because its use was controversial. Now it's not even available for anesthesia. It would suck if the same thing happened to propofol.

[–] JdW@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

anesthesiologist

There you have it, qualified medical professionals refuse (and are not allowed to anyway because of the oath) to participate in executions. So the people administring whatever concoction is made are not medically trained nor usually even particularily knowledgable on the subject. And yes, this has caused a series of botched executions, to the extent that the most bloodthirsty states are looking at smimpler ways to execute. Hence this aricle.

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[–] Pat12@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago (5 children)

"Smith was one of two men paid $1,000 each to murder Elizabeth Sennett on behalf of her preacher husband, Charles Sennett Sr., who was in debt and wanted to collect life insurance money."

Hold on, so why is he being executed? He wasn't the one who ordered the murder. It seems like lots of other people request murders but those people aren't sentenced to death.

[–] roboticide@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Because he accepted money in exchange to brutally beat and stabbed a person to death. "Just following orders," has never been an acceptable excuse for an individual to commit a crime, but especially when it's not an order in a military hierarchy, it's payment and a voluntary agreement. Fuck him.

Sennet Sr. committed suicide the moment the police started to investigate him. That's why he's not about to be executed.

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[–] ApathyTree@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Ok, but bear with me here, because for real, this is how I want to go, and how I plan to put down my fowl when they get too old to live comfortably, because there’s no stress involved to taint the meat, and I can feel comfortable with myself for giving them a good life with free roam, and a good end.

It’s incredibly humane. You feel nothing and don’t know you are suffocating. If you’ve ever breathed helium, you know what nitrogen feels like - literally nothing. This happened to multiple individuals in space because nitrogen is not flammable, and is why they now use 6% co2 in non-oxygenated spaces.

The body does not care if it has oxygen, that’s hard to test for biologically because oxygen is highly reactive, what it does test for is buildup of co2. As long as you can breathe out the co2, your body knows nothing.

So if they are going to kill other humans, this is the way to go. I don’t agree with doing that non-voluntarily, but if it’s going to happen this is at least humane.

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[–] Silverseren@kbin.social 24 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Always the conservatives trying to innovate on how to kill people.

[–] mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

because the medical companies they got their lethal injections from decided they'd rather not be associated with governmental killing.

then the foreign countries they bought from decided the same. so now they have to get creative.

Personally, I'd like to see a 500t press option: literally just drop a 500t weight on me from a 30' height. By the time my brains register any sensation they'll be strawberry jelly squishing out the sides of the press plate.

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[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Alabama:

we’re innovating! :D

Everyone else:

bro what the fuck

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[–] Rinna@lemm.ee 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I am by no means pro death penalty, but I prefer this over the lethal injection. It's a very painful and horrifying way to go and not at all like the drugs they give someone for medical euthanasia, while suffocating on nitrogen is actually relatively painless.

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