“Kenny just began to gasp for air repeatedly and the execution took about 25 minutes total.”
Pretty compassionate way to kill a person.
Once again, the Law in the south is brutal.
So they fucked it up and then there’s a real gem in the article. The jury voted to give him life without parole. A judge overruled that jury to give him the death penalty anyways.
There are no more laws. Only the whims of judges.
Was this based on sentencing guidelines at the time?
But yeah… Brought to you by the same people who convince juries that nullification is not a real thing for malum-prohibitum crimes.
If it was then why even have a sentencing jury? Wouldn’t that qualify as false hope torture and as such a violation of the 8th amendment?
The American system of elected judges is bonkers to me. Here in Canada even your basic judge has to be a lawyer in good standing for a decade before being reviewed by a panel of seniors judges and recommended to the position. Their job isn’t to play “tough on crime” to the crowd and do everything possible to obtain convictions so that people will like them. Until they retire up here their whole job is to uphold and defend the presumption of innocence so a defendant gets the full benefit of the law and an innocent person is not unjustly punished. Their job is to put into practice the ethics and design of the law as written to afford the humane treatment to other humans by the state and defer the ultimate judgement of guilt or innocence to a jury of peers.
Elections in a system like law create natural conflicts of interest and once someone is convicted once on shitty practice by a judge with no prior qualifications getting that person out of the system is like trying to swim against a riptide. The American system seems primed to create victims of the state, not to uphold justice.
As always, the cruelty is the point.
There are many accounts of workers accidentally entering confined spaces that have been purged with nitrogen and they were all unconscious in seconds. (OSHA records). If it took the prison 22 MINUTES to execute this guy, then they totally botched that execution.
The state tells you murder is illegal. Except when the state does it. You can’t expect people to follow, “do what I say, not what I do.”
It’s cruel, it’s a reflection of our morals. The death penalty is not a deterrent for murder. The death penalty is hypocrisy. The death penalty is for an unserious society.
But the death penalty is just a symptom of a greater chronic illness we suffer from. We’ll just continue to kill ourselves until we find a cure for the disease.
Edit: I see many do not like my wording for state sanctioned murder. If you are reading this and don’t understand, imagine if listening to George Bush (can’t remember which) tell the tv America doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. He’s drawing a moral line in the sand with terrorism. That’s my point. We need to figure out where our moral line in the sand is with the death penalty, because right now it’s all over the place. Do I think outlawing the death penalty will solve our societal woes? No, I do not. The people will demand it until it is reinstated. For me I ask what is the purpose of the death penalty? Does it serve a greater good for a society? Obviously it does not. Americans are murdered all the time, so it serves no purpose.
The cure is education. Unfortunately they are killing that, too.
Good education is so underrated, yet so difficult to actually get, especially with these silly book bans and stuff which only serve to narrow students’ perspectives
I want to preface this by saying I am against the death penalty.
The argument
The state tells you murder is illegal. Except when the state does it.
really falls apart when you consider all the other things the state is allowed to do that would be otherwise illegal. The simplest comparison is imprisonment but there are dozens of others.
Exactly, the government has a monopoly on a lot of things, among them violence and as an extent of that monopoly also incarceration.
I can see how some people have a hard time grasping that. I mean most of us would like to have no violence at all, so allowing some that power can seem strange. But how about traffic laws?
You can’t get in your car and go 200km/h down the road, which I sometimes would like to, but I hope we all can see how everyone doing 200, where 80 is more appropriate, would be a problem. So we’re ok with police/fire/rescue being the only ones allowed to break the speed limits and running red lights, right? It’s the same thing.
We’ve got specially trained people, who have been given strict guidelines for doing stuff ordinary citizens can’t do, because the society need something done that can’t be done without these powers … and who have oversight (hopefully), so these powers aren’t abused.
How’d you make your comment in bold font?
Does your text box not have a little “B” above it? If not **text** will make it bold. Surrounding the text with a single * will make it italics.
thank you*
I think you are onto something. The cure will be found when nobody is left. /S
deleted by creator
I will also preface this by saying I am 100% against the death penalty. The fact that we could put an innocent person to death for what I see as zero gain makes it very hard to convince me otherwise.
However:
The state tells you murder is illegal. Except when the state does it.
Murder is by definition the illegal killing of someone. Unless I’m mistaken, every state has some law on the book that allows you to kill someone, at least in the case of self defense or the defense of another when it’s reasonable to believe there is imminent danger to one’s life. And the defense of the DP is that it’s “defending” society against these criminals. It’s BS, but your point is also incorrect.
This is kind of a silly argument. The state is not a person. When they fine you money, it is not identical to someone stealing from you.
Ah, so it is okay for institutions to murder people. Gotcha.
The state doesn’t intentionally murder innocent people. Your argument is invalid.
The state does not care whether they are innocent as well, and that callousness is just as bad from the eyes of people living in a civilized society…
I’m pretty sure this guys’s guilt was beyond dispute. States have so many appeals and checks on capital punishment that it is much, much cheaper to default to life in prison. The economic argument isn’t noble but should be included in the debate.
It’s estimated that 4% of prisoners on death row are innocent. Sure, we’re certain about this guy, but that’s the case for those 4%, as well.
That’s a good argument for increasing the threshold of guilt for capital crimes. But of those legitimately and obviously guilty, do they owe a debt equal to their own life for murdering someone else?
How does their death pay for that debt? There is no compensation, no restitution has been made, nothing else is corrected. So, why?
It would be restoration by proxy. I once had a friend who stole money. He did not know the person and could never find him again. To make restoration he gave an equal amount plus reasonable interest to a charity, anonymously. The charity was a proxy for the man from whom he stole.
Can you proved evidence to this opinion of yours?
Which opinion? That the state doesn’t care about whether a victim of a murderer is innocent or also a criminal? You can look up just about any criminal case and see that criminals are just as often victims of crime as any ‘innocent’ person. Literally, a compatriot dying while committing a crime with you will get you charged with Felony Murder.
If you mean that the state doesn’t care if it executes innocent people, well: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence
So aside from your opinion… and a link that doesn’t even suggest what states actually care about,
got anything else?
deleted by creator
Woah there, kiddo. It appears you haven’t learned how crime and punishment works. You see, there are varying degrees of crimes, and thus- varying degrees of punishment.
This is why shoplifters aren’t executed.
Hopefully this simple reference will keep you from embarrassing yourself in the future.
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Civilian murderers also have justifications for their actions. I accept those justifications just as much as I do those of the State murderers.
This place is so stupid sometimes they’d fight for the rights of their own families murderer’s. No point in trying to put facts in front of people like that. They’ve made their decision.
Oh I know. I’d be surprised none of them reported my comment simply because they disagree with it. Lemmy LOVES being outraged.
Lemmy LOVES being outraged.
Sorry, who’s being outraged here?
Seems Lemmy also loves coming to conclusions on people they know nothing about.
Seems Lemmy also loves coming to conclusions on people they know nothing about.
So how is what I said about you being outraged different from what you said about “Lemmy” being outraged?
Because I’m showing no indications of actually being outraged, and Lemmy does tens of thousands of times daily.
That’s how.
Stop executions.
Imagine actually allowing the government to murder people, dumbest thing we ever allowed 🙄
What about billionaires? Can we at least execute them?
No
Welcome to the 21st century, you might want to read up on what’s up in most developed countries.
deleted by creator
Gruesome.
I’m not convinced the death penalty is worthwhile except to feed someone’s wrath.
What if, (and hear me out,) we did for corrections the sort of thing that countries with low recidivism do? Like, not use for-profit prisons with incentive to turn out re-offenders, and not use prisons that turn out hardened criminals that aren’t equipped to function in the world without resorting to crime, and actually take the ‘corrections’ or ‘rehabilitation’ parts of their nomenclature seriously?
If all we do with our prisons is punish and humiliate (and squeeze slave labor out of) convicts, we’re just creating future crime and all that’s left at that point is killing convicts at industrial pace unless you can figure out that crime is more driven by poverty than anything else, and the USA just doesn’t want to figure that out because it just doesn’t want to solve poverty or crime, it wants to make money creating and punishing both.
It is seriously incredible that in the United States prisons are for profit. Healthcare and water are for profit too…
Only 8 percent of US prisoners are in for profit prisons. This is definitely a problem, but it’s not the main problem with our justice system, by any means. The way we focus on punishment instead of rehabilitation is a bigger problem than the fact that for profit prisons exist. I mean, getting rid of for profit prisons is a start, but the whole thing needs reform.
The cruelty (and profit it generates) is the point
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
That message might be more effective if it weren’t associated with a weird doomsday cult that most people don’t like.
I had no idea Albert Einstein was in a doomsday cult. Now. Should I believe a space cowboy on the internet; or one of the most intelligent people to have ever lived?
Marxists believe in a destiny where there’s a complete failure of society. Late-stage capitalism and all that. There will be a great revolution, lots of people will die. Doomsday. It’s inevitable. It’s destined to happen.
But much like revelations, there will be a judgment day, but instead of Jesus there will a dictatorship of the proletariat. But that will fade away. Like a rapture or something like that. And then we will have heaven on earth, a worker’s paradise for all eternity. It has been prophesized by some weirdo with a big beard 200 years ago. It was written, so it shall be!
Soviet Union? That doesn’t count! The stars weren’t aligned properly and they were doing too much farming and not enough factory work. Well they did have factories, but things happened in the incorrect order. The prophecy from the man with the big beard specified the exact order things would happen in and the Soviet Union didn’t follow that order precisely! It doesn’t count!
The prophecy of the man with the big beard will happen any day now! We’ve seen the signs. LATE. STAGE. CAPITALISM. Our destiny is upon us!
Any day now!
Marxism LOL.
You, sir, have made my day. This is worthy of Reddit Gold.
Ever heard the phrase “Socialism or Barbarism”? Marxists don’t believe socialism is an inevitable result of the end of capitalism. Socialism has to be built, the entire theory of Marxism is that we observe the history of the world (i.e. the history of class struggle) and, rather than waiting around for history to happen on its own, we intelligently act on historical forces and cultivate a better world we want to live in.
If we just wait around for capitalism to collapse on its own, i.e. wait for what comes after late stage capitalism, we might all die.
Capitalism could very well collapse into a post-apocalyptic hell where a few million survivors huddle around the poles to survive.
Or just a nuclear war and total human extinction. Or a fascist Mars colony where only the elite are allowed to escape Earth. Etc.
Yes, I understand that you believe in an inevitable doomsday and it’s all based on some complicated system you’ve devised from reading the texts or whatever.
But that’s what every doomsday cult says.
Do the texts specify date for the end times? I like the doomsday cults that do that because when the date comes and goes it’s kinda funny. But I guess marxists don’t do that otherwise it would’ve died out a long time ago.
Capitalism sucks but it outlasted the Soviet Union. Capitalism also outlasted a hell of a lot of college professors that believed in it. Most people just grow out of it when they realize how silly the whole thing is. Others grow old thinking “any day now.”
The reality is no one really knows where things are headed. People find it comforting to hear from people that act like they’re certain of the future. Even if the future they talk about is a doomsday. But it’s all bullshit, no one knows the future.
What we observe in capitalism is that it depletes resources as fast as possible in order to maximize profit. That’s obviously impossible on a finite planet, and that’s why we’re running into real limits because of climate change. “The texts” are just the scientific observations on when the ice caps and glaciers will be gone, when the fossil fuels will be too expensive to continue, when the rainforests will be gone, when the top soil will be depleted, when the oceans will acidify too much to support shellfish and corals, etc etc.
Saying we can’t predict any of these things is unscientific. You’re like a mystified peasant that refuses to believe feudalism will ever end.
Next you’ll say that some magical technology will solve all those problems and save us, and that is just blind faith in a cult of progress.
They are beyond our understanding. They’re like a fire juggler at a luau. It’s best to not get in their way while they’re working.
You will always have some crazy evil mfucker even if you give them all of it. There were a gang in my country from mid class families that robbed houses. They went in a van and stole until the last TV. Human CAN BE evil by nature. It happens in other species too. Bears kill salmon just for pleasure.
Mental illnesses will never be eliminated, but can be managed. Raising material wealth in society will never eradicate crime, but it will lessen its likelihood.
It’s not just the prison system that’s fucked. It’s society in general.
A former prisoner will always be shunned. No matter if rehabilitated or not, people will always fear a former prisoner (at least in cases of brutality or sexuality) and often even former accused people. That also makes the whole system absurd. If people don’t trust in rehabilitation and therefore always push former criminals away and back into one corner or another, we might as well continue/intensify killing them right away; society decided that there is no way back, so why bother. And that sucks.
Removed by mod
Every day you wake up and think, “There’s no way America can get even more fucked up than it was yesterday”.
And every day some asshole says “wanna bet…watch this.”
USA, USA, USA!
Fuckin Merica fuck yea.
I don’t support capital punishment.
But hypoxia in humans is well studied. Unless they were using monumental stupid gas like CO2 (which triggers your breathing reflex) then the problem wasn’t the method, in principle.
I wouldn’t put it past a execution supporter to fuck it up somehow, though.
personally i think we should start doing a slightly modified version of the traditional british canon execution.
For those who aren’t familar, you strap a dude to the front of a canon, with a dud charge (i don’t believe there is a projectile) and then set it off and run. Apparently it’s pretty “spectacular” I say we do the same thing but delete the head in the process. Or perhaps add a canon ball because why not.
If we’re executing people theres no need to pretend what we’re doing is “good”
Too expensive and dangerous. A 2-ton tungsten cube dropped on the head is quick, painless, cheap, and puts on a show that can be cleaned up with a power washer.
We’re going to adopt your proposal but all that’s in the budget is a 45 lb plate from a local gym that closed down. Next execution is scheduled for next week, we hope to see you there!
I imagine that a two ton cube of anything would probably work.
A two ton cube of mattress foam probably wouldnt. But there is literally only one way to know for sure
Let me suggest duck beaks.
Ahh, 2 tons of duck beaks actually aren’t heavy enough, actually
Tungsten is very dense. It is space efficient.
Two ton cube of glitter hoss
Apparently, getting compressed by seawater inside a collapsing carbon fibre tube at a depth of 8kms is ultra quick.
Maybe we should just force condemned prisoners to test-pilot oceangate submarines.
deleted by creator
That’s literally the plot of Iron Lung.
actually, i like this idea. I think someone else mentioned just dropping a massive concrete cube on people for execution. It’s a funny one for sure.
Concrete spall would be too dangerous. Trust the tungsten state sponsored murder cube; it is the death of the future, today!
just makes it more exciting :)
Have you no concern for safety? Somebody could be hurt.
humans love danger! It’s what we’ve been doing since the dawn of time!
We are talking about a legal murder here. We don’t want any chance that somebody could be hurt. If people want to experience danger, they can play Russian roulette, budget skydive, fly on a Boeing, go to school in America, drive while black, try drugs from China, speed in New York on a motorcycle, explore abandoned buildings and eat the paint, become an amateur arborist, deliver pizzas, be a woman, own a tiger or chimpanzee, take a firearms self-defense course run by a balding guy with a ponytail, or compete in Gol/Nanggol.
There is no need for someone to be uselessly harmed at a state execution! We live in a sane society.
And it’s reusable!
Environmentally safe!
Tungsten is not cheap, also it might fracture
It costs about $1.25m to execute one person currently. 2 tons of tungsten costs $60k spot, $240k with government contract as a one-time purchase. If it were to become damaged, it can be recycled into a new state sanctioned penal murder cube. Given the price of tungsten will increase in value approximately 100% per decade, it is a viable government investment.
Elect me to be king of America. I will balance the budget and establish a stranger economy with a dollar backed by state sanctioned penal murder cubes and other innovative and cost-effective measures. We will all be equal in death and that is a promise you can count your votes on.
deleted by creator
I can’t agree with this, everyone knows you’re supposed to reuse before recycle. The murder cube will look way more badass with some chips and cracks in it
You act like running a country is hard. The only hard part of running America is hiding all your bribes.
Under my administration I will have a website that will clearly show contributions to my throne with one of those donations thermometers that will be updated live and never surpass 7/8th full because the goal is always just a bit more money. Under it you will find about 10 clickbait user-targeted ads, a leaderboard, loser board, and the last 10 donations. There will also be links to my Patreon, Venmo, CashApp, Fansly, and Onlyfans. I am all about transparency and honesty in my rule.
I will use those mandatory contributions to pay for universal healthcare and cutting edge wars of aggression against states with viable economic exploitation possibilities or usable land for battery factories to supply a green infinite rail system that services all major cities without using fossil-fuels to move people and goods.
Subscribe
deleted by creator
tungsten isn’t cheap. look up the prices
and that’s a pretty small rod
That is a finished machined tungsten rod from a distributor, not a 15 inch cube from a manufacturer. Metal rod is more costly to machine than billet.
Even extrapolating from that invalid example, volume of it would be 2.36 cu in. Volume of 2 tons of tungsten is roughly 3375 cu in. So the price of a 3375 cu in cube at the price of a 1/2x12 tungsten rod would be $594,028.60. Even at a half million per cube, or about $2 million in government spending contracts, the cost savings over just 2 executions is apparent given the $1.25-1.5m cost of one execution.
The cube is reusable and therefore environmentally friendly. We could end up dropping the same cube on generations of victims of state sponsored penal murders in multiple states instead of having to go through vet clinics or welding gas suppliers for unsustainable forms of capital punishment.
When the actual cost of a state sponsored murder cube is closer to $240k($30k per ton plus government contract pricing), it doesn’t make financial sense to continue our inhumane state sponsored murder techniques as we do. In 2023 the prison system has murdered 24 people, which cost roughly $30 million dollars of wasted tax-payer dollars. With the Capital Punishment Cube, we could have saved the tax-payers over $25 million by using only 4 cubes plus transport(<$5 per 1000 miles) and powerwashing($200/hr).
Sentencing the probably rightfully convicted to capitol punishment by state sponsored murder cubes is cheaper, more reliable, more humane, more sustainable, and more environmentally friendly. We owe it to the future generations to enact the changes that will make for a better world; state sponsored penal murder cubes are the change we need to make in order provide that better world for the children.
Capital Punishment Cubes are the future of a humane and green justice system.
Only if they eat glitter as part of their last meal.
i second this.
Pro Life!
“Pro-life” is just the label they put on it to seem pious. It’s not pro-life. It’s anti-women. With conservatives the suffering is the point.
When is America going to learn that you can’t punish murder with murder? You are literally saying “rules for thee but not for me.”
Iran’s hanging people in public, America gasses them with private viewing.
For your consideration.
Use a bolt gun. It is good enough for the cows and pigs it is fast, it probably hurts but likely less time than even a needle.
I suggest starting by testing it out on the person that though slow suffocation for 25 minutes was humane.
another good one. Not quite as theatrical as a canon execution, but a funny idea nonetheless.
deleted by creator
I feel like I have heard someone say it tastes better that way. I’m sure that would make it justifiable.
I don’t know anything about this other than the guy most have been pretty terrible to be on death row but even a brutal killer should have some rights nobody deserves to die like that
There’s also this bit…
When asked at the news conference about Smith shaking at the beginning of the execution, Hamm said Smith appeared to be holding his breath “for as long as he could” and may have also “struggled against his restraints.”
That’s false spin. Nitrogen air is just regular air minus oxygen, 78% of the air you breathe is nitrogen. He was suffocated to death simply put, he died of hypoxia. It would be like someone getting shot, but then taking 5-8 minutes to slowly die minus the immediate burning pain of a gun shot or sudden drop in consciousness from immediate/fast bleed out.
He only killed one person too. Seems he killed the wrong person, maybe someone with power/connections. It makes no sense how he gets the death penalty but other murders don’t.
I don’t believe in the death penalty first off its cheaper just to give someone life Imprisonment and second its morally wrong
… and third sometimes they get it wrong and execute an innocent person. You can release an innocent person from prison when you screw up, but there no undo for an execution.
Fourth, the process of carrying out an execution can get botched. While there are plenty of people that have the necessary skills needed to carry out an execution, nearly all of those people won’t do it because of that hippocratic oath thing.
Fifth, it’s just a bad look. It feels like it’s more about revenge and than justice, and it’s important to not get these things confused.
This 100% agree
How is it cheaper though? I don’t support death penalty, but I fail to see how it’s cheaper to keep them alive?
Someone who’s life is on the line will tend use every possible legal resource possible to avoid getting killed. Survival instinct.
On the other side, people making the decision to kill a guy tend to want to make sure they got it right.
So lots of appeals, lots of time in the court. Lawyers and judges get paid a lot more than prison guards, and the cost of prison guard is spread over many prisoners, while the cost of the judge and lawyers for an appeal is all just for that one person on death row. Courtrooms tend to be nicer than prison cells so the upkeep cost of infrastructure is also higher. Doesn’t take all that much time in a courtroom to come out to a higher cost than keeping a guy in a prison for the rest of his life.
even a brutal killer should have some rights
Dude, sincerely, fuck off.
What you do to the worst is a good indicator of how we treat everyone else
Pray tell, what is your favourite method of execution?
As a general rule I tend to avoid killing people whenever possible
Obviously. It’s far too much work. That’s what I pay my executioners for.
Snu Snu
Guillotine
Firing squad, guillotine. Walk the plank.
His victim died far more painfully if that helps.
Justice isn’t revenge.
Never said it was.
Justice is giving what’s owed. And that’s a great thing to argue about: What did he owe? To the family, the victim, and society. The question would be easy if taking his life restored the life of the woman he murdered. But that’s not possible. However I have seen arguments that would require his death so organs could be harvested to save the life of others who would otherwise die. I’m not comfortable with that but do think that debate needs to happen.
Are you fucking mad? You want to give the state an incentive to murder prisoners? What the fuck is wrong with you?
ALL COPS ARE BAD
I think we need to have the debate. If you murder someone, do you owe your life if it can save the life of another?
As a transplant recipient who is now listed for a second transplant.
Nobody wants the state to murder people to increase the supply of organs.
Stop couching your vengeance fantasies in altruism.
I read “autism” and thought, “holy shit, what did I miss?”
My brain is broken haha.
I hope you get your next transplant soon and everything goes well. Take care.
I think we need to have the debate.
Humans LONG before you had the debate already. Pick up a history book, please! You are not a unique snowflake with concepts this earth has never before thought about. Everything that rattles around in the paint-can on your neck has been debated for generations.
Find a major US newspaper who had addressed the debate any time in the past generation.
I’m sorry, people are justifying the death penalty by fucking harvesting organs?
These are some serious dumbshits who don’t think two syllables past what they are saying.
First of all, there’s the obvious ethical dilemma of sentencing someone to death because someone important needs a kidney and they happen to have the same rare blood type. You just know that’s bound to happen eventually, and you know it’ll be covered up. More than likely it’d be some trumped up charge against a black inmate who already had a life sentence and no means for recourse.
Second, the majority of murderers are criminals. And a lot of criminals have a history of drug abuse, alcoholism, and other risk factors for communicable disease and excessive wear on their organs. 99% of the organs to come out of this mill would be totally useless. No surgeon in the world would touch them with a 15ft forceps.
God it’s make more sense to auction off their organs as trophies and give the proceeds to reputable charities. I’d pay good money to have a serial rapists balls in a jar on my mantle. Thats a hell of a conversation piece.
Logical argument don’t work around here. These kids need to be outraged and there’s no stopping them.
“Logical”
For a sociopath maybe.
Good thing most of us live in a developed nation where we don’t try to take an eye for an eye, since that makes the whole world go blind. You can never be 100% certain they aren’t innocent.
Fancy quotes doesn’t make a thing true.
It does not. We are not animals.
We are, in fact, animals. You need to dial back your notions of personal divinity.
Yes. We are. My god what happened to public schooling?
So an eye for an eye?
False. He died far more painfully of hypoxia that took over 5 minutes and he was able to dread it coming for years.
Good.
A brutal killer should have no rights and should be killed brutally.
You sound like a republican
I don’t even live in America
Well you sound like the equivalent of a republican in your country probably a British conservative
Lmao guess again
He wasn’t a brutal killer, he was hired to kill someone and did it out of greed. That’s actually not brutality. Brutality would be someone raping someone and then killing them for glee. The state in this case is doing this out of brutality, they are doing it because it brings enjoyment and their method of execution is quite brutal.
Could you do it? Would you make someone else do it for you?
Come on, isn’t this america? Why don’t they just shoot prisoners?! It’s quick, cheap and they love shooting, don’t they? Coming up with so many twisted ways to kill a person just to do it differently than the Nazis. If even Belarus is still officially shooting their people, why isn"t the greatest country in the world?
/s because I can’t handle thisMississippi authorizes firing squad if nitrogen hypoxia, lethal injection, and electrocution are held unconstitutional or “otherwise unavailable.”
Oklahoma & Utah have similar rules.
Because guns don’t kill people. The NRA said so.
Holy shit, you’re right. Firing squad would be kinder. And I hate guns, so…
From another report:
“It appeared that Smith was holding his breath as long as he could,” Hamm ( Alabama’s corrections commissioner) said at the press conference.
Well, that would certainly make things worse for the prisoner and the witnesses.
If that’s the case, then he wasn’t going to be unconscious in seconds, as it would be expected by breathing the gas.
Instead, he inadvertently caused himself a lot of unnecessary suffering.
That’s okay next time we’ll just run a tube down his throat! That’s not cruel at all!
Or maybe we put them in a room and fill it with the nitrogen gas. Some kind of… Chamber.
It’s not really about the nitrogen. Earth’s atmosphere is 78% nitrogen already. It’s the absence of oxygen that’s fatal. Our bodies don’t sense a lack of oxygen, just a surplus of CO2. The idea is to remove all the oxygen and the CO2. It’s a slow suffocating process but, in theory, the subject would only experience falling asleep. Of course that assumes it’s done properly and the subject isn’t panicking, neither of which seem likely.
We do it for pigs! Except we use CO2, because it’s cheap and apparently we don’t give a fuck about pigs.
I’m a rancher and meat lover and still the fact that the slaughterhouse industry chooses to gas animals with CO2 disgusts me. On my farm we dispatch with a rifle shot to the brain, the animal is dead immediately.
Honestly that’s the choice I would take if I had to be executed. Though nitrogen gas is fine too, I used to do confined space work and have seen many examples about how you don’t even know that you’re dead.
No no, too cruel. That would risk them hurting themselves when they fall over. We must strap them tightly in place upside down for security purposes, and then put a tube down (up?) their throat. And if we accidently put it down their food hole
then that’s just a bonusthen it was probably their fault for struggling.For the record, fuck the death penalty.
I think a mask, which I assume they used, is far better in this context. Just like being at the dentist.
But in medically assisted suicide, an injection is used (sometimes drugs that a patient can take themselves), and it is by far the most respectful, humane way to do it.
If a prisoner is going to hold their breath and make it worse than it needs to be, you can’t fault the method.
That said, the situation was still horrible from what’s been described.
If a natural human response messes up your execution, you should absolutely blame the method.
Do you try to hold your breath when you get gas at the dentist? It would be aweful.
You can’t control how some people are going to act.
Some faint when they see a needle, some vomiting when they are electrocuted. Some soil themselves before a hanging or firing squad.
I’m not saying I support execution or the method, but it’s obvious that this could have gone much smoother had the prisoner not try to intentionally hold their breath.
It quite literally should have been very relaxing, quick, and as respectful as you can expect for an execution.
Right, they were trying to not die. That is what everybody will do in this scenario. That’s the kind of thing that happens when you murder somebody, the victim is generally opposed to your plan, and so they typically do not do as you wish. An execution that plans to have the victim of it go along with the plan is simply idiotic.
If execution is the punishment, there really won’t be a perfect way to do it, not without the prisoner’s cooperation.
Really, this would have been a much better way to go than electrocution, which is traumatizing for everyone involved.
Keep in mind, this guy survived lethal injection, so maybe he was simply trying to cheat death a second time.
If the person we’re killing struggles then it’s not our fault? Really? Did my sarcasm make you think I actually supported this bullshit?
If the person we’re killing struggles then it’s not our fault? Really?
I’m saying that in this specific case, if he was holding his breath, then it caused considerably more suffering than it needed to.
I’m offering an explanation as to why witnesses saw him struggle so much, not saying that one way is better than another… to execute someone is going to be horrible no matter how it happens.
It didn’t have to be at all though. We don’t have to keep doing this.
I don’t disagree.
