Alabama is seeking to put a second inmate to death using nitrogen gas. The move comes a month after the state carried out the first execution using the controversial new method.

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.

  • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
    261·
    9 months ago

    They put him in a mask instead of a sealed room. The mask filled with CO2, and may have not had a perfect seal due to thrashing as he struggled to breathe.

    • Rakonat@lemmy.worldEnglish
      16·
      9 months ago

      There are ways the masks could have worked but really to do this kind of thing humanly you need a sealed chamber with enough volume for CO2 to diffuse into or some kind of scrubber at the bottom pulling air out and displaced with pure N2 at the top.

      It’s difficult to tell if they are using the setup they are because of incompetence trying to seek out the cheapest solution, or malice and using the cheapest solution that will cause the maximum agony and suffering. It’s pretty bad when bringing back hanging would be a more humane way of executing people than this travesty.

      • Corkyskog
        8·
        9 months ago

        I don’t understand how they even fucked it up. You have a very shallow mask with positive pressure from the nitrogen gas and a valve that opens when there is any extra pressure. Person breathes out CO2 and some nitrogen gas is expelled, person breathes in, almost only Nitrogen gas is inhaled. Am I missing something? I am not an engineer, but this seems like a way you could do it.

    • Th4tGuyII@kbin.social
      9·
      9 months ago

      Well that makes sense - without any exhaust, the volume of nitrogen available wouldn’t properly displace the air from his lungs before he put the mask in…

      So he could’ve essentially just died from regular asphyxiation, which is quite painful, with a side of nitrogen.