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States Turn To an Unproven Method of Execution: Nitrogen Gas (nytimes.com)
States are reportedly turning to nitrogen gas to carry out the death penalty. "Oklahoma, Alabama and Mississippi have authorized nitrogen for executions and are developing protocols to use it, which represents a leap into the unknown," reports The New York Times. "There is no scientific data on executing people with nitrogen, leading some experts to question whether states, in trying to solve old problems, may create new ones." Slashdot reader schwit1 shares an excerpt from a report via The New York Times: What little is known about human death by nitrogen comes from industrial and medical accidents and its use in suicide. In accidents, when people have been exposed to high levels of nitrogen and little air in an enclosed space, they have died quickly. In some cases co-workers who rushed in to rescue them also collapsed and died. Nitrogen itself is not poisonous, but someone who inhales it, with no air, will pass out quickly, probably in less than a minute, and die soon after -- from lack of oxygen. The same is true of other physiologically inert gases, including helium and argon, which kill only by replacing oxygen.
Death from nitrogen is thought to be painless. It should prevent the condition that causes feelings of suffocation: the buildup of carbon dioxide from not being able to exhale. Humans are highly sensitive to carbon dioxide -- too much brings on the panicky feeling of not being able to breathe. Somewhat surprisingly, the lack of oxygen doesn't trigger that same reflex. Someone breathing pure nitrogen can still exhale carbon dioxide and therefore should not have the sensation of smothering.
Death from nitrogen is thought to be painless. It should prevent the condition that causes feelings of suffocation: the buildup of carbon dioxide from not being able to exhale. Humans are highly sensitive to carbon dioxide -- too much brings on the panicky feeling of not being able to breathe. Somewhat surprisingly, the lack of oxygen doesn't trigger that same reflex. Someone breathing pure nitrogen can still exhale carbon dioxide and therefore should not have the sensation of smothering.
That word doesn't mean what they think it means.
Because cavemen. And also lying about it, because "punishment" is something you can walk away from. This is revenge and savagery.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
We seek better and better, more and more "clinical" means of state-sanctioned killing. First the electric chair, then gas, then injection, then back to gas, apparently. It's almost as if we don't want to admit what the state is doing in the public's name. Personally, if we're going to keep the death penalty, I'd like to see the judge, jury members, and DA draw straws to be on a firing squad. If people are willing to sentence others to death, they should be willing to put their "money where their mouth" is. Better yet, get rid of capital punishment. Wasteful, expensive for appeals, and too much risk of a wrongful convicting that can't be reversed. See also: Cameron Todd Willingham and the West Memphis Three.
Life in prison with no possibility of parole. That is 1/4 the cost, much more humane, and can be reversed if you realize you made a mistake such as crooked forensic scientists getting caught faking the data or police detectives forcing fake confessions. These things happen and it is much easier to say, "oops sorry" when the person is still alive.
The death penalty DOES NOT reduce crime.
The problem comes with the name. What do you call a nitrogen gas execution chamber?
Obviously, a "gas chamber". That term has some baggage.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
With life imprisonment as the other option, it is far more humane. That would be true if we had Swedish prisons, which are practically luxury apartments. Being caged and isolated do severe damage to the human psyche. The only legit moral issue with the death penalty is that it's imperative to be completely sure you have a guilty man; admittedly, our system is awful at this.
* It prevents the offender from hurting anyone again. Incarceration does not. Incarcerated murder kill prison staff and other prisoners, as well as escape, or serve out their sentences and re-offend.
* It deters as surely as lesser punishments deter, like incarceration or fines. Charts of death penalty vs. murder rate in the US underscore this point. It's curious to assert that lesser punishments deter, but the harshest does not.
* It's the closest to justice as we can get (i.e. a commensurate cost imposed on the offender). Most think the offender should incur some cost for malicious pain inflicted on others. Codes of justice going back to Hammurabi reflect a sense of fairness that it should be commensurate.
It's strange that places that have the highest distrust of government also are cool with the government executing people. Just yesterday, there was a story of a guy who was on death row for 16 years before he was completely exonerated. I would think that just one of those cases would be enough so that anyone with a moral compass would oppose the death penalty. But if there's one thing we know, it's that Americans love seeing people get kilt and they love feeling self-righteous, so that makes for a lethal combination. People in red states seem to love giving their governments the ultimate power over life and death.
Fortunately, there's absolutely nothing in Oklahoma, Alabama, or Mississippi that anyone here would want, so this only affects the poor folks who live there. But it does explain why they're at the bottom of almost every state ranking of quality of life.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm not the OP you were responding to, but I am currently anti-death penalty.
Currently, my only two issues with the death penalty are:
1) It must be done humanely. If there is a method of execution that is fast and completely painless. I currently believe that the only method of execution that satisfies this issue is Nitrogen gas. People who have survived high-nitrogen gas environments said they didn't feel any pain. Just blacked out and woke up later...maybe had a headache after waking. I don't know of any known instances of someone saying that it was a painful experience. I may be wrong on this though...I haven't fully researched it.
2) You must have 100% concrete evidence that this person actually committed the crime that they are accused of. I consider this to be even higher than the legal standard of proof in the US called "Beyond reasonable doubt". You need another legal standard of proof that I don't believe exists. I would call it "Beyond Possible Doubt". Basically this would mean that if the defense can come up with a possible explanation of the evidence presented that suggested he didn't do the crime, then it's up to the prosecution to prove that is explanation didn't happen...If you can prove the crime "beyond a reasonable doubt" then it's life in prison...if you can prove it "beyond possible doubt" then it's the death penalty.
I think there are very few situations that would actually satisfy my 2nd requirement...you would need multiple videos of the crime, at least one of them must completely clearly show the defendant's face, multiple independent video analysis services verify that the video wasn't altered/doctored/etc., the video shows DNA evidence of the defendant being left at the scene, the video continuously shows that the evidence wasn't tampered with, full video of the chain-of-custody from collection to analysis, and that DNA evidence is matched with an exceptionally high level of certainty (multiple independent labs, and the defense is entitled to their own testing).
And then assuming you can meet both of those criteria, you then start a 10-year waiting period where all evidence must be fully preserved. When there is 1-year left in that waiting period, the defendant is essentially entitled to an almost-second trial, using new/more sophisticated techniques and knowledge to refute the evidence that was present at the trial. Burden of proof on the prosecution isn't as high...you aren't re litigating the entire trial. Just the admissibility and reliability of the evidence. If new/better DNA and video analysis techniques can suggest that the evidence wasn't as reliable/irrefutable as originally thought, then the sentence is turned to life-in-prison. If the new techniques of analyzing the evidence suggests innocence (reasonable doubt), then you're entitled to a new trial.
I understand that this is an exceptionally high prosecutorial burden. It would have to be largely reserved for the most egregious of offenders. But, as others have said...if you kill someone, you can't make them whole....you can't even try to make them whole...You can never bring them back to life. If you simply send someone to prison you can attempt to make them whole (give them triple the average salary in their state, per year for each year they were in prison...put out full-page ads in the top 2 news papers in all locations in a 200-mile radius from their home and the top news paper in the top 20 markets in the US that proclaim their innocence...and a pension that is equal to the average salary in their home state.)
The only legit moral issue with the death penalty is that it's imperative to be completely sure you have a guilty man; admittedly, our system is awful at this.
Death penalty or not, the system should not convict the innocent at all. I makes me sad how many people harp on death penalty while happily allowing confessions and eye witnesses to be used at trials. Those have been proven to be easily manipulated and directly responsible for imprisoning the innocent. It's as if thousands of lifetimes behind bars is better than even one execution.
There's also the issue of settlements. Those basically allow the rich and powerful to skirt the law because the state can't be bothered to fight it all the way. Meanwhile, the poor with their overworked public defenders don't have the resources to fight the long battle, and, regardless of their innocence, have to settle for a plea bargain.
There's another problem with nitrogen. It's too humane.
If the objective was to simply kill painlessly, all it would need is a couple of bullets to the head. People, though, are bastards. They may talk about 'justice,' but what they really mean is 'vengeance.' The public want a show. The family of any victim want a show. Politicians want a show. Many people will feel physically sickened if they believe the condemned died peacefully, as if the scales remain somehow unbalanced. This is why nitrogen was not introduced as a mean of execution years ago. Not many people are bold enough to openly say they want to see just a little bit of torture first, but it's a very common sentiment.
Well no whether it's a life or not isn't a tricky issue. It's very clearly a living human. The tricky part concerns higher level issues like whether or when it's a 'person' and whether or when termination is permitted. It's silly to try to say it's not a) alive, and b) a member of the Homo sapien species.
(emphasis mine)
You hit the nail on the head here. Most death penalty proponents do not want to execute criminals, they want to see what they see as Bad People(tm) suffer. They don't want execution. They want torture, the more horrible the better.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
[...] the idea that the 'state' has a problem figuring out how to murder those among its own citizenry whom they've decided to murder, suggests their government is being done by utter incompetent morons. Killing people, and doing so quickly and reliably, is one of the easier things there is to do...
Of course. The United States is not short of ways to deliberately murder people. It's just short of ways to do it that involve convincing themselves that they are not deliberately murdering people.
It has to feel like a clinical procedure, otherwise you may as well just be chopping off heads with a sword in the public square.
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There is no obligation to be "fair" when fighting injustice.
I disagree. Do not commit injustices to prevent injustice, as you merely perpetuate injustice.