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Oklahoma Says It Will Now Use Nitrogen Gas As Its Backup Method of Execution
schwit1 writes Yesterday, Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin signed into law a bill that approves the use of nitrogen gas for executions in the state. The method, which would effectively asphyxiate death row inmates by forcing them to breathe pure nitrogen through a gas mask, is meant to be the primary alternative to lethal injection, the Washington Post reports.
Fallin and other supporters of the procedure say it's pain-free and effective, noting that the nitrogen would render inmates unconscious within ten seconds and kill them in minutes. It's also cheap: state representatives say the method only requires a nitrogen tank and a gas mask, but financial analysts say its impossible to give precise figures, the Post reports.
Oklahoma's primary execution method is still lethal injection, but the state's procedure is currently under review by the Supreme Court. Earlier this week, Tennessee suspended executions statewide following challenges to its own lethal injection protocol.
Fallin and other supporters of the procedure say it's pain-free and effective, noting that the nitrogen would render inmates unconscious within ten seconds and kill them in minutes. It's also cheap: state representatives say the method only requires a nitrogen tank and a gas mask, but financial analysts say its impossible to give precise figures, the Post reports.
Oklahoma's primary execution method is still lethal injection, but the state's procedure is currently under review by the Supreme Court. Earlier this week, Tennessee suspended executions statewide following challenges to its own lethal injection protocol.
We kill people because they kill people. So who kills the people who kill people because they killed people when we find out they didn't actually kill anyone?
The problem States are having is that companies refuse to sell the drugs to the States because of sanctions imposed on them by the EU. You can get nitrogen anywhere.
The problem with using anesthesia is that organizations (the largest of which is the EU) forbids selling anything used in executions. So states that use anesthetics to execute the condemned will find they may be then unable to purchase the same anesthetics for use in hospitals. Nitrogen, being ~80% of the atmosphere, can't possibly be restricted.
FWIW I am completely against capital punishment, and for why one need look no further than the recent admission by the FBI that they were biased to decide a match in forensic hair analysis, which may have led to up to 14 wrongful executions. However some barbaric states are just going to continue to do it anyways, so they may as well do is as humanely as possible.
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
Guillotine. Make sure the guides are sufficiently greased and the blade exquisitely sharp, it will be over in a second or so.
If there's a question about the instance of pain as the blade slices through the neck, rub a numbing solution on the skin.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Yeah, this is pretty macabre. How about we just avoid killing people?
And no, it isn't because they don't deserve it (although we inevitably execute and imprison innocent people). Most deserve worse than they get. How about let's just go with the simple idea that killing is wrong and strive to avoid it whenever possible? Killing people diminishes us - even if they were evil scumbags who deserved worse. I don't need to look to other cultures for examples and counter-examples of executing people. I don't need a popularity contest about how many other people don't like the death penalty (or the converse). Let's just go with "no killing" because it is right and be done with it.
Atheism and absence of morality are not synonymous. One need not invoke a deity to have a moral compass. Most publicly vocal atheists in the west are also opposed to the death penalty. At the same time, at least a couple of history's greatest mass murderers were also avowed atheists. It doesn't seem that atheism and opposition to killing are at all correlated, just as belief in any of the major religions is not a good predictor of one's stance on the death penalty.
Troll rejected: erroneous premise.
Which leads to an obvious question: Isn't the U.S. capable of producing its own anesthetics? At least the ones used for executions which should no longer be covered by patents?
Sure they could, but there's basically no market for it.
The established European companies have the legitimate-medical-uses market sown up, so that just leaves the killing-people market, which is really damn small, so they'd never even make back their investment, much less make a profit on it.
It would be possible to whomp up a government-owned corporation or government division to do it and not care about the cost, but the free market mania that the Republicans running the states that still do executions subscribe to probably wouldn't allow that or even have it occur to them.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
People these days are looking for the perfect mix of humane and sanitary.
I don't think anyone cares about "humane and sanitary". The people that want it abolished, want it abolished completely. The people in favor, tend to think shooting or hanging are fine. So we have "humane and sanitary" as a compromise that nobody really wants.
Oh please; they just realized how the drugs were being used? Decades of repeated, public use and some executive finally picked up a newspaper? Give me a break. What actually happened is that they periodically reevaluated the amount of money they made off sales versus the PR hit they took for making those sales and eventually the numbers tipped in a new direction.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
The Nitrogen (or any asphyxiation that doesn't involve the buildup of Carbon Dioxide) method involves turning off the brain's ability to feel pain as prelude to death.
Given the terrible fuckups that we see in executions recently, it's reasonable to assume that almost anything that can be screwed up, will be screwed up, and this one seems a lot simpler than some three needle solution using drugs you can't get made by anonymous compounding pharmacists you can't find with quality you can't test for administered by doctors that aren't trained. No, none of those things HAVE to happen, but they seem to keep happening.
This sort of execution method sidesteps those problems. But, why do we suspect it is painless? Mostly because people who recover from accidental exposure to Nitrogen generally report being utterly surprised.
In practice, it may be more humane to administer a sedative or even anesthesia beforehand. But acquiring those seems to be the problem in the first place: still, more options would likely be available than in the classic "three drug combination" of lethal injection, where an anesthetic (hopefully) dulls the pain, while a paralytic agent stops breathing (which causes pain) and a heart stopping agent stops the heart (which causes pain).
If they don't go this route, you'll likely see a condemned man struggling to hold his breath as long as he can, trying to avoid death, and eventually losing consciousness, inhaling, regaining consciousness for a moment to flail, and then dying. One thing that's missing from all the real life accounts is that almost everyone who gets into trouble with nitrogen or another oxygen displacing agent doesn't realize that they are in danger until it is too late or almost so, and as such the reports of painlessness are definitely flavored by that fact.
Let me just first clear out all the people that just don't like executions... lets just take for the sake of argument that executions are going to happen. I know you don't like them... but they're here to stay. Assuming that point, this method of execution is quite a good one. It doesn't inflict pain on people, it doesn't outwardly damage the body, it is very reliable, etc. It has everything going for it so long as you accept that executions are going to happen.
Now I know you don't want to accept that and I am not forcing you to... I don't have that power. I am simply asking to separate the discussion about executions in general from this specific type of execution. I don't really want to have a long conversation about capital punishment.
If you reply to me, talk to me about THIS method of execution. That is what interests me.
On topic, I am really happy they finally did this... the previous methods had too many problems with them. This method is ideal.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Every execution is a 100% successful deterrent - the executed criminal will never again commit a crime. Beat that.
That argument is defeated easily. If a criminal convicts a crime for which the sentence is death, then obviously the sentence was not a deterrent.
Any deterrence beyond that is a "nice to have", but not required.
On the contrary. The purpose of a deterrent is to discourage someone from committing a crime in the first place. That is fundamental, not "nice to have."
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Nitrogen really is a good method. I learned about its use in this area when I read about 2 NASA(?) engineers who died right after a fuel tank was flushed with nitrogen. One walked into the middle of it for whatever reason and then collapsed, then the second went in to see what was wrong and he collapsed. They say it brings a bit of euphoria and then eternal sleep.
CO2 works fine too, but the hand flapping and increased respiration attempts aren't real pretty to watch (though worrying about the aesthetics of how you kill someone is, um, just fucking weird). CO also works just fine - no hand flapping or straining to breath, but it also has aesthetic "issues".
Note: I don't support state sanctioned murder - if for no other reason than the abysmal record the US has for justice - even when the condemned was actually guilty of the crime, the crime was arguably that of the state, not the condemned (homeowner shoots unarmed petty thief, petty thief that is not shot dead is convicted). I doubt there are many people outside the US that don't believe there is something extremely wrong with the self-appointed moral guardian of the world (life imprisonment for a joint, fines for giving out food, secret trade agreements that breach US sponsored International Human rights, etc, etc).
If you can't bear to kill your 'criminal' by ripping off their heads with a rope tied to the back of a F100 you're just putting lipstick on a pig and calling it pretty. And yes, there really are a large number of US 'citizens' that'd like (Facebook style) the F100 method (sadly it's not unique to the US), just look at the comments on /. from people cheering the idea of prison rape, or the human hemorrhoid that gets all excited at the idea of using liquid nitrogen and a hammer for state executions. On second thought - maybe state execution is the answer, just not for the people you put inside the cells of your prisons with the world's highest percentage of incarceration[*1].
Disclaimer: I spent part of my youth in Missouri (pronounced "misery") within sight of Monsanto - it's not Denmark that reeks of something seriously rotten.
[*1] I know.. (sigh), those that deny their ugly blood lust will point to statistically insignificant data from countries with populations of less than 100K, and simultaneously justify their own countries imprisonment rate, and their "right" to armed self-defense - whilst remaining blind to all the inherent contradictions. i.e. if your prison and justice system worked your 'citizens' wouldn't need guns, and you'd have the safest nation on earth. Roll on the triumph of optimism over experience like the Sherman tank of freedom, and whenever you lose a hand - double up.
How about let's just go with the simple idea that killing is wrong and strive to avoid it whenever possible?
Because most people disagree with this. You kill bacteria, and insects, maybe even small mammals, and are responsible for the deaths of many large ones through your choice of appetite, clothes or furniture. Killing is not wrong, killing is right when applied correctly. The only argument is to define the boundary between correct or not.
So, your point is that the worst countries have the most people? Or that it's ok to kill as long as the population is high?
CO2 works fine too, but the hand flapping and increased respiration attempts aren't real pretty to watch
I'm pretty sure that the increased respiration attempts aren't enjoyable to endure either - the body senses heightened levels of CO2 as a sign of suffocation. Whereas CO simply attaches to red blood cells instead of O2, meaning there's no sense of suffocation.