I’d like to wonder how Nitrogen Asphyxiation, which I know from my LN2 safety training is extremely dangerous due solely to the fact humans can’t tell it’s happening until they faint and die, can’t be used because it’s inhumane and dangerous, yet lethal injections, electric chairs, and toxic chambers are perfectly fine to use.
I don’t support the death penalty/capital punishment, but if the punishment is the death itself, torturing prisoners is plain unnecessary
It’s prolly the most humane form of execution and prolly companies that supply lethal injection that are kicking up a fuss. If I had to choose a way to go, nitrogen all the way.
All those companies refuse to make the “medicines” used in it, actually. In this rare instance, the private sector pushed back and effectively ended lethal injection as an option.
Hence AL looking elsewhere.
I’m with you guys tho, N asphyxiation is peaceful…but as we all know, the cruelty is inherent and fundamental to capitalism. Hence the propaganda campaigns.
Dunno anyone killing me against my wishes, peaceful or not, seems like cruelty.
The cruelty standard in this case applies to the method not the punishment.
Yep tell them they’re getting nitro’d in 4 days, then nitro them in their sleep that night.
It’s literally the way I choose to die.
Chased off a cliff by lacrosse players?
Having your nuts bit off by a Laplander, that’s the way I wanna go.
Topless lacrosse players. That distinction is a rather important bit.
Well death by snu snu is my PREFERRED way. Nitrogen asphyxiation would be a distant second but highly preferred to any of the others mentioned.
So, the Swiss suicide pod lets you kill yourself with nitrogen gas, and apparently that’s absolutely fine and painless.
Alabama thinks about using nitrogen gas, and it’s cruel and unusual?
WTF am I missing here? Or is it all just the BS hyperbole of US politics?
Well clearly the difference is the Swiss suicide pod is for suicide, and in Alabama it is state-sanctioned murder.
I can understand disagreeing about the death penalty but the difference between choosing to do this to yourself vs it being done to you regardless of your feelings is a dramatic difference, is it not?
You’re forgetting that this person is going to die by the State’s hand regardless of the method. Given that, how is nitrogen asphyxiation more cruel than lethal injection?
I’m not condoning the death penalty, just confused why someone would say nitrogen asphyxiation is cruel and unusual when in another context it’s desirable.
I’m not forgetting that, not really. I was just breaking down the comparison between assisted suicide and the death penalty.
I’m against the death penalty but if we are going down that route nitrogen hypoxia seems the sanest and safest way to me.
In one situation: A person that wants to die chooses to do so.
In the other: A person that wants to live is tied down, with a mask over their face, possibly holding their breath until they can’t take any more, knowing that they will die shortly after their next breath.
I can hold my breath for about two minutes, maybe more if it I knew it was my last breath. I don’t know if I could make myself breathe if I knew it would kill me. That sounds like an absolutely terrifying way to go.
I mean, you’re literally making up the procedure, but fear monger all you want. People are already tied down and injected with painful chemicals. I’d much rather a painless, odorless gas than lethal injection any day, and you’re insane if you think it’s less humane.
If you’re against the death penalty in general, ok then, but don’t project that so far as to deny people a peaceful death. That is pathetic and should obviously be the less moral choice to deny the less painful option.
I’m missing the part where being suffocated while you are conscious is peaceful. It’s true I don’t know the exact procedure, but I don’t need to know more than that it involves being forced to inhale nitrogen until death to imagine it is anything but peaceful…
First off, I’m 100% against the death penalty, this is only an argument of pragmatism. Nitrogen is by far the most simple and humane method at the states disposal to perform executions. The rapid hypoxia will leave the victim unconscious within a minute and death will happen shortly after. It requires minimal equipment and essentially no training to be effective with this method. People who perform lethal injections receive no training and fuck it up way too much for it to be considered safe. If the state is going to execute people (which they shouldn’t) they should seek to limit the amount of suffering and margin for error and inert gas asphyxiation is a good choice for both of those. If they wanted to make us easier on the victim they should consider giving them an oral sedative like versed shortly before the execution. Regardless, they’ll be out in under a minute so it still minimizes pain and suffering
I think you’re disregarding the fact that the idea that breathing will kill you, while you are tied down with a mask over your face, would likely lead to more than a couple terrifying moments of holding your breath and holding on to life for as long as you can.
Nitrogen asphyxiation as a suicide method is painless as far as we know, yes. But try holding your breath for as long as you can, and imagine you are tied down and will die shortly after your next breath… doesn’t exactly sound quick or peaceful to me.
I’m not forgetting that aspect of things, as horrible as they are. But they are a significant improvement from the pain and suffering caused by lethal injections. If I were on death row I would beg for nitrogen over lethal injection. The people administering injections often receive no training and screw it up often enough for it to not be a viable method in my eyes. Additionally, the compounds they use cause a burning sensation in your veins. Throughout your entire body. Id rather panic and pass out for a minute than be set on fire from the inside for several minutes until my lungs fill with fluid enough for me to pass out from pain and suffocation that’s more akin to drowning or strangulation than regular ole hypoxia.
I don’t think it’s necessarily peaceful, but it is quicker and less painful and that’s about all we can ask for if we’re going to be executing people.
To be fair, lethal injections also sound absolutely horrible (and for the record I agree fully that nobody should be executing anybody in the first place).
Still, to me it sounds so absolutely terrifying to be in a situation where I know that my next breath will be my last, and having nothing but willpower to stay alive for however long I can. It sounds quite similar to torturing someone while leaving them a gun so they can end it when they can’t take anymore.
At least with other methods you aren’t forced to pull the figurative trigger yourself.
To me it really just underlines how barbaric and inhumane these death penalties are…
Even if breathing Nitrogen is the most humane way to be killed, you can’t disregard the delivery. If someone is fighting to hold their breath to live longer, to knock off their mask to live longer, or a doctor can’t intervene in case it goes wrong, those those are possible arguments against even the best murder method
I’m against capital punishment so won’t agree with either side but you do have to insider whether the delivery method is also humane. This is also the big difference with the suicide pods where the patient is willingly cooperating with delivery, vs state sanctioned murder where they may not be
Completely agree. I’m also against capital punishment but all things considered I think if they’re going to do it nitrogen is the most “humane” way to do it. Not to diminish the fear and suffering that the victims will still experience, which they certainly will. It will just be quicker. Whether they pass out from holding their breath or pass out from hypoxia, they’ll be out in a minute or so, which is much quicker than other forms of execution in use today
Yup I agree. We don’t refer to certain suicides as “cruel and unusual”.
That’s because suicides aren’t a method. Stabbing is.
Fair
They are, however, illegal in Alabama.
The authors argue:
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Nitrogen execution forces prisoners to participate in their own death, which they consider cruel
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Delivery by mask is unproven and could lead to problems (like CO2 buildup).
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the protocol is heavily redacted and many other executions have been botched before, which does not inspire confidence.
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a lack of oxygen can lead to convulsions, which can prolong the execution if the airways are affected
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in case of a failed execution the prisoner is entitled to medical help. This could be difficult or even dangerous to administer in an environment of little to no oxygen
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mice did show a fear response when executed with nitrogen
While I do agree with those points and oppose lethal punishment myself, I would not expect the arguments to make a big legal difference. All of them do apply to other execution methods as well, and usually much worse. Personally, I would prefer a death by nitrogen to any other method on offer, if there is to be an execution.
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You are missing the willingness to participate. One wants to die, the other does not. It’s the same difference between a boxing match, and beating someone up.
I am not, it’s not relevant. The inmate is going to be murdered by the state, that is a fact. The only choice here is method. How is using a method that has been chosen for suicide cruel?
Again, not condoning the death penalty, just don’t see how the change of context for the method changes its nature.
If you actually read the fucking article you would see that it is NOT about the willingness to participate at all.
When you call things whatever you want, you open the door to abusing the law however you like!
Alabama people against it are just retarded is what you’re missing. It’s probably the most peaceful way to kill someone. No taste, no needles, bullets, or guillotine. You just get sleepy and that’s it.
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My God this article is full of stupid, awful arguments. Seriously some sort of agenda behind it. I hate the death penalty. However, if they’re going to do it anyway, nitrogen hypoxia is definitely the most humane method.
in my opinion - and I’m just some guy - there is no humane way to kill anyone who doesn’t want to die. It is a contradiction in terms. Therefore regardless of the method, it is simply “not humane.”
Fine, then the authors should argue that, honestly, instead of arguing against the particular method and thus dishonestly implying there’s some other method they would find acceptable. It’s a bad-faith “control the conversation” tactic that has no place in legitimate journalism.
They do (in general) argue against that in the first and last paragraphs of the article where they list (separately) themselves as abolitionists. I believe we can take that as read.
Agreed. I should have specified “more humane than other methods”.
By that logic it’s just as inhumane to put someone in prison that doesn’t want to be there, it is simply “not hunane”
pretty much any study into justice reform will tell you that’s the case in the majority of cases, yes.
I’d argue that waiting 80-100 years is much more humane and just as effective
Is it humane to spend those resources on a prisoner instead of redirecting the funds to a social program? We’ve already decided we’re going to remove these people from society. The Internet says it costs about $100 a day to house a minimum security prisoner, or around $3k a month. That could feed 20 people for a month.
It’s a lot more humane than killing them and later finding evidence that the conviction was a mistake. Unless you know a necromancer, keeping the most heinous offenders in prison for life is the most we can do.
I’m against capital punishment but you’re way off track here, missing the forest for the trees lol
you act like every case could go either way at any time. There are many where their crimes are unquestionable. In that case, is nitrogen more humane than keeping them locked in a box until they die? Sucking up funds that could help actual innocent people in need? That is the point being made here
Yeah… except the mistakes look like slam dunks. The very definition of a false positive.
Once again: it is cheaper to house a prisoner for life than to execute one.
It’s only cheaper because of the enormous costs and inefficiencies baked into our justice system. The costs of executing someone come down to court costs, not the tangible resources that the prisoner takes up.
Funny enough, a lot of these appeals and investigations only cost so much and go on for so long because of the initial poor quality of police actions.
It’s like being released after 20 years on DNA evidence that was never checked initially, or where someone was convicted of rape but never positively identified by the accuser. A procedural fuckup costs millions blown in court, prison, and settlement costs.
Or you know… both?
It’s cheaper to house a prisoner for life than to execute one.
Air forces around the world use nitrogen inhalation to simulate the effects of hypoxia caused by high altitude decompression for training.
From that we know for a fact that it is absolutely painless all the way to loss of consciousness.
We also know that it is perfectly safe to have people in the same room who do not participate in the exercise.
And we also know that you don’t need a perfectly fitting mask if the had mixture is supplied in it at positive pressure.
The author is reaching at straws for arguments so he makes them up. He’s imagining possible problems or downsides and calls them as immediately disqualifying without ever bothering to look for their validity or solutions.
I’m against capital punishment. But if it has to be done this seems to be the least cruel method to do it by far.
it’s hard to imagine complications with electricity or lethal injection as we all have electricity in our houses, and administer injections hundreds of times per second across developed countries - and yet a significant amount of times either are used in the rare cases of execution they are bungled causing distress, pain and delayed death of the condemned person to both the victim, the executioner and the witnesses.
It isn’t hard to imagine complications with electricity or lethal injection at all though?
I guess irony doesn’t travel online. If it’s easy to imagine complications there, why is it incorrect to imagine complications with execution via gas inhalation?
Is he arguing that this is cruel and unusual punishment because they have to continue breathing? Otherwise they will feel the CO2 build-up if they hold their breath. I’m sorry, but if capital punishment has to be a thing, I’ll take Nitrogen poisoning over any current method.
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A little? If I’m going out, might as well go out with all the opioids.
Actually, why aren’t opioids used for lethal injections? IV overdose of heroin/fentanyl is well known to cause death, and going out that way wouldn’t be nearly as painful as the current triple drug mix.
Just use an ungodly amount of carfentanil.
I don’t know the actual answer, but here are the excuses that I get when I have asked this question previously.
- People have different tolerances and you can’t be sure the dose will kill them
- Some people may vomit while dying and may suffocate on the vomit during the event
- The people who manufacture legal Fentanyl don’t want to sell it for the death penalty.
These sound like some pretty silly excuses, but I am just a layman. I fail to see why the federal government couldn’t test confiscated Fentanyl until they find something pure and resell it to the states for this purpose.
The government siezes lots of illegal fentanyl. Just put it in the condemned’s cell. Could do the same with heroin. There’d have to be exceptions made to the current law to be able to do this legally, but if the prisoner wants to go out on their own terms, let them.
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I’m torn about this. I’m against execution in any event, but the idea that this is somehow worse than other methods is a silly proposition. Good job on the article author for making it sound as awful as possible, but there’s a lot made of small things that are by and large better than other techniques that are considered constitutional. I strongly feel like this is more about preventing this particular execution than making sure the best method possible is used.
And that’s great. This execution should be stopped, but since it’s legal for now it would be a shame for this one case to deny this method to other prisoners who would otherwise be subject to lethal injection or electrocution, both of which are far worse.
I’m against capital punishment as well, but this is how I’d plan to go out.
The author’s argument actually seems pretry flimsy to me. If the issue is that it’s cruel to make a prisoner an active participant in their own execution, you could easily resolve that by putting them to sleep before applying the nitrogen. Breathing is only voluntary as long as you’re awake; once you’re asleep, you’re no more in control of breathing the nitrogen as you are in control of your heart pumping a lethal injection throughout your body.
Absolutely, the argument is crap, but they do a really good job of framing it to sound awful. Like, you die of suffocation. The nitrogen is harmless and breathing it makes you more comfortable. They make it sound like people are going to harm themselves by holding their breath to keep the deadly stuff out of their lungs, but it’s harmless and they don’t live any longer by not breathing it, so all they are doing by holding their breath is to make the experience more miserable.
But the article careful tiptoes around anything that doesn’t serve the narrative. So they did a good job at propaganda, but an awful job at journalism.
Maybe. I’m against capital punishment as well so won’t agree to either side, but you need to consider it. I don’t know if it would be more subject to failures of the delivery process but if you’re just dismissing the possibility instead of arguing it, I’ll reflexively disagree. State sanctioned murder is too serious to shortcut due diligence
I cannot believe we still have the death penalty. Crazy.
Mostly in backwards bumpkin states like Alabama. Most civilized states don’t do it or just never use the penalty.
So many arguments in here are basically “I don’t like the orphan crushing machine, but I guess if we have to have it, I’d rather the machine be on the fastest setting.”
There’s no “execution method” argument that can exist with an anti-capital punishment opinion.
People recently invented a fancy thing called compromise. It means you can choose your second best preference if your first is not available.
E.g. I would preffer steak for lunch but I will take pizza over being hungry.
when saying what we ought to do, there is no need for compromise at all
Yep, sounds like US politics in a nutshell
Ah yes, compromise on your morals, just like a good ol’ steak vs pizza
do you compromise your morals and throw the switch, killing only one person, or stick to your moral convictions and allow it to kill five by your inaction?
Ah yes, life imprisonment, the greatest way to empower a murderer to kill… i guess other people in prison… who should be killed… so they wont kill each other… or…?
well actually i meant was choosing harm reduction is better than tossing your hands up and doing nothing when your ideal isn’t an option but if you want to pretend that’s what i meant that’s fine. par for the course on this instance.
Harm reduction? You put together a poorly worded argument and want to pretend people are misconstruing what you’re saying. Currently, effectively, most if not all lethal injections are on hold. Care to explain what “harm reduction” you’re supporting so people “dont pretend you mean what you don’t mean.”
There for sure is, there’s even one in the first part of your argument
If the tactic is to outlaw it progressively then outlaw the worse methods first
If you’re trying to blanket ban it all then that isn’t what’s happening here
In a veterinary euthanasia study comparing death from pentobarbital injection to nitrogen gas inhalation, most animals exposed to nitrogen gas developed early convulsions. In a prior physiology experiment exploring human adaptations to hypoxia, healthy volunteers breathing pure nitrogen often experienced seizures within 17-20 seconds.
I’d love to read these studies if available. But the author forgot to reference their sources. So I don’t know what they’re referring to
“Forgot” to cite their sources
This one? although i didn’t see the results you mentioned unless i missed it.
If you read this article, start from the halfway point. The first half is absolute fluff.
Arguments against:
- The executed needs to breathe. Author believes this will cause stress as they may attempt to hold their breath.
- An ill fitted mask for nitrogen delivery may be a safety concern for occupants in the same room. Article did not have details on how much nitrogen is delivered or how much would be need to impact a small room.
- if an execution fails, first responders may have difficulty treating the patient due to the prevalence of nitrogen gas.
- When terminated by nitrogen, a study found mice elicit a fear response indicating that more research is needed before using this as an ethical means of terminating mice… or people.
Author also argues that since other states don’t use this method, it shouldn’t be used… which feels more like a chicken and egg problem.
The thing is, we already know exactly how nitrogen affects humans, and we know due to industrial accidents.
I’ll preface this next part by saying that I don’t think the death penalty should exist at all, and that when you give the State the power to kill, that power will be abused.
So, addressing the author’s “concerns”;
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You can only hold your breath for so long. The stress of doing so would be no worse than the stress of knowing you’re being executed. You can make the exact same stress argument about any form of execution.
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Ill fitting masks are a concern, but nitrogen by itself is not a concern in a well ventilated room. The prisoner dies, not because of the nitrogen itself, but because the nitrogen displaces oxygen. Normal air is about 78% nitrogen. Any other concerns can be alleviated by having oxygen sensors in the room.
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Saving someone from nitrogen hypoxia is actually pretty easy if you get to them quickly. And again, a well ventilated room means that it will be completely safe for everyone (except the guy wearing the mask)
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Mice are not humans. Humans cannot tell when there’s more nitrogen than there should be. That’s why nitrogen is so dangerous in an industrial setting.
Basically, the author comes off as having failed every basic science class they ever took.
I don’t know enough about the finer details of this topic to say what is right or wrong, but I was hoping to be educated by the article… which felt like it was just thrown together without proper due diligence… or editing.
Yeah, the author seems to be a complete dipshit.
Yes, you can argue that the death penalty is bad. I often do just that.
I don’t make up bullshit that’s so easy to disprove in order to push my point.
The author is doing more harm than good here.
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Since it has never before been used for state sanctioned murder, we should be careful about how we apply it, and make all efforts to avoid mistakes
I think that holds true whether or not it’s been used before. So, I agree.
What ridiculous reasoning! They are required to participate … by breathing normally? Year somehow participating by your heart beating is ok?
They are against it because they don’t want to set a precedent allowing it. Death penalty opponents have come as close as they ever have at abolishing it by lobbying drug makers to stop providing standard drugs. Nitrogen gas, however, is cheap and easy to obtain. Right now the only argument against it is that it’s “experimental” (despite plenty of accidental deaths providing ample data), but once successfully used, that argument is gone.
Also, nitrogen is not poisonous. You asphixiate in about the same amount of time regardles of whether you breath, so participation 100% not required. It is just more comfortable to participate.
I guess my biggest question is if this only works well with someone who cooperates, why are they not allowed to put the person under with anesthesia first, then administer nitrogen as part 2?
Anesthesia needs a highly skilled resource to apply it correctly, and most of them refuse to be involved in an execution, for obvious reasons. This is one of the major cause of errors in lethal injection executions.
If it were just about execution being painless, we’d execute people by detonating a block of C4 taped to their skull. 100% guaranteed instant and painless. But it’s not about that. It’s about those who oppose execution coming up with every reason to abolish the practice. I don’t think there’s a single proponent of capital punishment opposing nitrogen gas.
My personal opinion is that capital punishment should be reserved for a new standard of proof - beyond any doubt. If there’s the slightest doubt, the sentence drops to incarceration.
“Beyond any doubt” would mean abolishing it. It is an impossible standard
Any case held to the standard of “beyond any doubt” would be trivially defended. It is theoretically possible we’re all in the matrix and the whole case was just faked by our all-powerful machine overlords. Is the doubt reasonable? No. Is it a doubt? Yes
I’m in favor of abolishing the death penalty. We shouldn’t do it with roundabout semantics and sham trials though
I agree in principle because I think the universe is absurd and complex, but I disagree in practice because most humans form a consensus on the basics of reality far more than we might think.
It’s reasonable to doubt reality from a philosophical point of view. Even though you might be able to make a very well-reasoned case about how humans lack free will using quantum physics and the debate about determinism, we don’t see people escaping murder charges this way.
If you have a murderer who was caught on camera and arrested on the scene, one who left a manifesto and confesses to the crime, I think we could use “beyond any doubt” pretty safely here.
My bigger concern is that people would still abuse this though. They’d say they had no doubt about cases where there weren’t any witnesses, the accused is denying it, etc. They’d be giving the death penalty to innocent people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time because they had absolutely no doubt the person did it.
So yeah, there are cases where beyond any doubt would make perfect sense but I’m still against capital punishment because I’ve seen what one crooked police officer or racist judge can do to a person’s whole life.
Person on camera was a black male, 5’2" to 6’6" wearing a dark hoodie. The suspect certainly fits the description. There was a written manifesto, but the suspect says he didn’t write it. He says he only signed the confession after being tortured by the police for hours.
Your proposal is exactly the system that exists now, and it’s unjust.
eh, detonators can fail, and troubleshooting a bad connection could be considered torture.
But I agree with the central thesis - but would suggest a 50t block be dropped on me from 50’. works every time, 0% chance of survival. splat. at most you’d have a microsecond of sensation before everything gooshed out the sides.
I propose injecting heroine an hour before this, die colorfully
It takes too long for the signals to travel to the brain for us to ‘experience’ an event like this. We don’t perceive things instantaneously, it just seems that way.
I am against the death penalty across the board, but this article is bad. It makes a lot of claims about nitrogen asphyxiation without citation, and one thing it does cite contradicts what they write.
There’s tons of hand wringing about how the prisoner would be an active participant in their execution. By breathing. They spend an awful lot of time on this point, and it’s almost silly.
There’s some points about how responders would be able to safely enter the room in case of problems. A portable oxygen source with a mask would do.
And then there’s this huge misrepresentation for the one scientific study they actually cite:
A group of Swiss researchers conducted research in 2019 on the comparative humanity of nitrogen versus carbon dioxide in euthanizing mice. Their conclusion? That nitrogen did produce a fear response, raising questions about its ethical use as a mouse execution method, and that further studies would be required to determine whether nitrogen would be a suitable euthanasia agent for mice.
Here’s the study they cite for it: https://boris.unibe.ch/136198/1/pone.0210818.pdf
Abstract from there: “Carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the most commonly used gas euthanasia agents in mice, despite reports of aversion and nociception. Inert gases such as nitrogen (N2) may be a via- ble alternative to carbon dioxide. Here we compared behavioural and electrophysiological reactions to CO2 or N2 at either slow fill or rapid fill in C57Bl/6 mice undergoing gas euthana- sia. We found that mice euthanised with CO2 increased locomotor activity compared to baseline, whereas mice exposed to N2 decreased locomotion. Furthermore, mice exposed to CO2 showed significantly more vertical jumps and freezing episodes than mice exposed to N2. We further found that CO2 exposure resulted in increased theta:delta of the EEG, a measure of excitation, whereas the N2 decreased theta:delta. Differences in responses were not oxygen-concentration dependent. Taken together, these results demonstrate that CO2 increases both behavioural and electrophysiological excitation as well as producing a fear response, whereas N2 reduces behavioural activity and central neurological depression and may be less aversive although still produces a fear response. Further studies are required to evaluate N2 as a suitable euthanasia agent for mice.”
The tone is completely different. The study thinks N2 would be a good candidate for euthanasia in mice. They do conclude that there is a fear response, but less so. Far from “raising questions about its ethical use as a mouse execution method”, the authors think it’s worth pursuing as a more humane method.
Again, the death penalty should be abolished. This article is garbage.
