“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.
The body is weird when it comes to breathing. It doesn’t measure one of the critical gasses. 3 things particularly send the body into a breathing panic.
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Rising CO2 (via blood acidity)
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Water in the airways.
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Resistance to inflating the lungs.
Water boarding is particularly evil, since it creates just enough of the last 2 to trigger a full blown drowning reaction, but is light enough to not actually be dangerous. This lets the questioner hold the victim in that zone, without permanent physical harm (but massive psychological harm).
Nitrogen hypoxia doesn’t set off any of those triggers. This makes it particularly dangerous to some workers. They don’t realise anything is wrong until they pass out.
Also, to clarify. I am massively against the death penalty. It’s both cruel, and not particularly effective as a deterrent. It’s also no cheaper, in practice, than life imprisonment. However, if it is going to be used, it should be as humane as possible. Nitrogen hypoxia is about as humane as it can get.
They cannot do it humanely with a method that requires the person to breath normally to work. If they can hold their breath it will always be inhumane because they will still be struggling and have the same impending doom and physical reaction as waterboarding.
It does not matter if the chemical properties are different when the person has a working brain and doesn’t want to die. Or if it is being implemented by incompetent people who couldn’t even kill him with lethal injection in 2022.
A person who is doing it voluntarily for suicide would not be struggling against impending doom and would be breathing normally. The context here is execution against someone’s will.
So what method would you suggest, assuming you must choose a method?
I’m completely against the death penalty. It’s no longer an option over here in the UK. However, if it must be done, do it as humanely as possible.
I reject your premise. Alabama’s government could have just said “we can’t get the drugs for lethal injection, so we’re not doing the death penalty any more.” Instead they said “we’re going through hell and high water to kill this guy.” Fuck them. The death penalty is morally wrong because it puts every member of a democratic society in the position of being a killer.
I will not choose a method because all options require a trained an licensed medical professional to implement humanely, and nobody who qualifies will participate because they have ethics that prohibit causing harm to be licensed medical professionals. That includes putting someone to death against their will.
Picking a method is agreeing with the assumption that we have to put people to death.
The thing is, all of the humane ways to kill someone require the person to be a willing participant in the process. Nitrogen works when the person is relaxed and breathing normally for example.
Locked in a box, with a cat, a flask of poison, a radioactive source, and a Geiger counter.
Except when the Geiger counter gets a hit, it sets off a nuclear bomb inside the box so I’m instantly vaporized.
