Alabama is seeking to put a second inmate to death using nitrogen gas, a move that comes a month after the state carried out the first execution using the controversial new method.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office asked the state Supreme Court on Wednesday to set an execution date for Alan Eugene Miller. The state said Miller’s execution would be carried out using nitrogen. Miller, now 59, was convicted of killing three people during a pair of 1999 workplace shootings in suburban Birmingham.
“The State of Alabama is prepared to carry out the execution of Miller’s sentence by means of nitrogen hypoxia,” the attorney general’s office wrote, adding that Miller has been on death row since 2000 and that it is time to carry out his sentence.
Those of you who read the news and watch it on TV know this already, but the execution last month by nitrogen gas was carried out AT THE REQUEST of the guy who was being executed. He wanted to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia, it was something he felt strongly about.
And according to the AG who witnessed the process, it went really smoothly and was much less horrific than many other methods of execution.
That’s interesting. I wonder what the differences are between nitrogen hypoxia and helium hypoxia (an increasingly popular suicide method).
I imagine none, unless you try to speak. They both do the same thing. Displace oxygen. Your body can’t detect either element.
Very little, only that helium is often supplied premixed with a little CO2 so you feel awful and stop instead of killing yourself
Oh, I didn’t know that. I suppose it’s a matter of public safety at that point. Though it does sort of force a person who is intent on dying to use an alternative method that may be more violent and/or public.
Doesn’t seem like there would be too much difference, maybe one would take longer than the other? I’m not sure.