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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.
Nitrous oxide, aka. NO2 or Laughing gas, would let the bastards go out laughing their asses off. Then there would be no debate about the cruelty of the death penalty method.
Actually, it doesn't make you laugh, but you space out a bit. If you want to try it, just buy a can of whipped cream at your local supermarket. DO NOT shake the can. Hold it the can upright, stick it in your mouth, press on the dispenser thing, and inhale. DO NOT exhale immediately. The effects will last about 30 seconds, during which you will have all sorts of dreamy thoughts about how huge the universe is.
If a death penalty candidate is given a steady flow of this, he will be asphyxiate, because he will be some deep in his dreams, that he will forget to breathe.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
But the blood in your brain will keep you alive another 5-7 seconds of agonizing pain as you watch your headless body slump to the floor. Not exactly humane.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I remember reading about reports from the middle ages about severed heads moving mouths, eyes, etc. well over a minute after decapitation. Surely some of it was involuntary twitches but on the other hand heart attacks usually don't kill instantly and most people can hold their breath somewhere around a minute. In any case its tough to ask how it feels.
Some people think that every problem can be fixed by adding more guns. Why not this one?
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.
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?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
I have had two friends overcome by nitrogen on two different occasions in industrial situations. Fortunately there were people to pull them out of the atmosphere and get them breathing again. In both cases there first words were along the lines of "What am I doing on the floor?"
"morality"? whose morality? usually whoever has the biggest army. history is filled with religions using armies to enforce their false "morality". animals kill, humans are animals, stop trying to think humans should be different.
of course, some atheists oppose the death penalty. so what? everyone can have their own ideas. don't ever think your ideas are better than someone else. from a logical and scientific point of view, "morality" is a cultural viewpoint that changes through history and geography. the killing,raping,destruction being done by ISIS fits within their "morality".
The people in favor, tend to think shooting or hanging are fine.
This isn't entirely correct.
1) Hangings and firing squads aren't error-proof and that bothers some who favor the death penalty.
2) There is something to be said for sanitary: The condemned prisoner's family didn't do anything wrong. Denying them a decent-looking body to bury is something that the state should avoid if possible. However, if the only legal (as determined by the SCOTUS) methods of execution result in a body that needs a lot of cleanup by the undertaker, that's tough cookies for the family.
Having said all of this, I'm generally against the death penalty as it is applied in the United States:
* Too many US states allow people to be condemned under the "law of parties," "murder during the commission of another felony," and for murders by people with no previous convictions for crimes that could have gotten them long prison terms. In almost all if not all of these cases, life-without-parole is a much more civilized punishment than death.
* Too many US states also don't disallow the death penalty if there were mitigating circumstances like an IQ only slightly higher than that of a mentally retarded person, a person who is young or immature but legally an adult, a person who is under the undue influence of someone else, mild- to-moderate mental impairments that would clearly benefit from the help of a mental health professional but which do not rise to the level of legal insanity, and the like.
When a jury condemns someone to die, they are basically saying "we give up on you as a human being." I'm almost never willing to do this. In the few cases where I am, it says that I am less civilized than I would like to be.
Assuming the guilty person has no extenuating circumstances, I am willing to recognize my lack of civility and recommend a death sentence for the principal actors (i.e. ringleader, top-lieutenants, and if they were truly free agents, the trigger-men) for things like large-scale "crimes against humanity" (dare I invoke Godwin's Law?) and for premeditated murder for the purpose of corrupting justice, such as to kill or intimidate a witness in a criminal case or intimidate other police (the ones who weren't killed) into resigning or looking the other way. I can also see it for people who commit (or arrange for) a murder while serving a life-without-parole sentence or while "on the run" after escaping prison while they are serving a life-without-parole sentence, on the grounds that without the threat of the death penalty they would be "free" to murder under the theory that "if you are willing to do the time, you are free to do the crime."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yeah, this is something that's often overlooked. The "omg I can't hold my breath any longer" reflex has nothing to do with oxygen, it is solely based on CO2 buildup. Someone breathing pure nitrogen wouldn't even realize anything was wrong until right before they lose consciousness (which would happen in seconds anyway).
Killing terrorists isn't so much as judgement as it is a confirmed method of neutralizing a threat that poses a clear a present danger. Otherwise, we wouldn't be incarcerating them in the first place. I'm sure many soldiers would be better off not capturing them in the first place as it puts their own lives in danger to do so.
Life is not for the lazy.
It's only cheaper because our capital punishment process is so badly broken. It should not take decades to complete the process; that's just dumb. On the other hand, there are flaw in how it's applied currently (moving to the second part of your issue with it), so those also need to be fixed. I support the death penalty, but with some pretty major reforms. And as a strong advocate of it, I would be open to suspending it until said reform has changed the process to one which is much faster, cheaper, more humane, more fair, more evidence-based, and more regulated. For starters, take all the stuff the Innocence Project is doing and integrate it directly into the process and provide wide open access to all information going into the process to any third-party groups wishing to provide sunshine/oversight.
Some individuals are so dangerous and destructive that all members of society (including prison guards, staff, and other prisoners) deserve permanent protection from them. I have no issue with extinguishing the existence of those who are so fundamentally broken that we can't contain their violence. However, we need to bend over backwards to ensure the process to do that is applied fairly, reasonably, and is designed to make it as close to impossible to execute an innocent person as we can reasonably make it.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Death by nitrogen is the ideal way to die. It's so effective it's one of the dangers in nitrogen inerted buildings. You don't know you are dieing you just pass out. SOmeone comes along sees you down in the room and tries to rescue you and bang they keel over too. It's the classic farmer manure pit death.
the key here is that your urgent need to breath oddly enough is not triggered by lack of oxygen but by build up of CO2. when you remove the O2 from your air then you don't notice it because your alarm system isn't triggered. You are still getting rid of the CO2 in your blood.
Why nature rigged it like that I have no idea but it is easy to see that under almost any normal condition the two are linked making having separate sensors of O2 and CO2 not needed so why evolve one.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The two problems with the method, which is incidentally why it was not brought up, it is a very accessible means of suicide and that state is now promoting it and of course an effective murder method, again which the state is now advertising. Quite the blunder, just so it can keep killing people.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Entirely right about nitrogen asphyxia. There is nothing magic about nitrogen; you could as well use any other colorless, odorless inert gas, but nitrogen is the cheapest.
One correction, though. "Stopping the heart" per se is most definitely not painful. Ask anyone who has undergone true sudden complete cardiac arrest. You immediately feel a surreal calm as all that commotion in your chest you never really noticed until that moment, and the rush of blood through your head, stops. Within single digit seconds you feel crazy high. In 10-20 seconds you are out like a light. It may take 10 minutes for clinical irreversible death to eventuate, but after 10-20 seconds you are a sack of meat. We know from those whose heart spontaneously restarts, or are resuscitated before complete death or brain damage, that the experience after 10-20 seconds is nothing more than unconsciousness.
It's not so much that CO2, or cardiac arrest, "turns off" pain. It entirely sidesteps the strangling sensation caused by buildup of CO2. As others have noted, there is no physiologic sensation from lack of oxygen, but there is an almighty agony from CO2 buildup.
I've never understood this argument. If a murderer is legally released, that should mean that on our best evidence, we believe the offender is unlikely to reoffend, or that we didn't have sufficient evidence to incarcerate them in the first place. In either case, having executed them first is an abomination.
As for the escape argument, saying that we should kill people because the prison system sucks at its primary job isn't exactly the most persuasive line of thinking I've ever heard. (Or is the argument that we should pre-punish inmates for escaping before they do?) That's quite apart from the fact that almost exactly nobody escapes from correctional institutions these days; they're pretty much all from work release or work camps.
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Less irreversible than execution. Also, it's easier for a person to sue for tons of money for wrongful incarceration than for the estate of a person to sue for tons of money due to wrongful execution.
And suing for lots of money is necessary to motivate the voters/taxpayers to keep the rate of wrongful convictions down. If wrongful convictions aren't freakishly expensive, there's no motivation.