First execution using nitrogen

[Jenry]

Alabama has executed a man using nitrogen flowing through a mask for the first time. Warning - distressing detail in the article.
how is this allowed to happen in this day and age? It’s inhumane.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68085513.amp

They took 6 hours trying to get the line in, and then the window for the execution expired last time, so they had to stop. I’m not sure of the qualifications of the person trying to get the line in - maybe he just wasn’t very good? Apparently it was extremely painful and traumatic.

An awful lot of these methods sound like cruel and unusual punishment. Even the length of time people spend on death row. If this man had been found guilty of murder in the UK, he’d have been out after 16 or 18 years, probably - it seems very jarring to spend 35 years on death row, then be executed - whatever you think about the death penalty.

@Hamsterinaball would you do that to your dog? No?

Then why do you think it’s ok to do it to humans (or pigs for that matter)?

Ensuring that the slaughter of animals is done right has been high up on the agenda for a very long time. The fa t we might not have managed to put in place there doesn’t mean we should give up and kill humans, dogs, cats etc… the same way.

@JustExistingNotLiving

If a murderer had killed one of my family gassing would be welcomed thanks

I find this utterly barbaric. This man has been in prison with this hanging over him for 34 years already, and has gone through the failed execution. At this point Alabama's conduct is considerably worse than his was, and using gas brings them horrifyingly close to the Nazis.

I'd read the BBC account, not the linked one

Having looked at it now, It doesn't seem to answer that point. The difficulties with an IV line to deliver the current 3 preferred drugs are discussed at length. Using a single heroin overdose instead would not require a line.

It wouldn't work with someone with fugitive veins to the extent that one could not be found at all, but in general single injection is easier than placing a line.

But as I said first, and reiterate now. I think the death penalty is wrong, and the US's inability to find an acceptable, humane method just adds an extra level of wrong.

I agree

Yes but we really shouldn't run justice systems using this thought process.

I expect I would feel differently, too. However, the point is that the way the state behaves should not be based on my primitive revenge impulses.

But if you don't agree with me that gassing people, whoever they are and whatever they've done, is really disgusting, then yes I think you're incredibly strange.

You need to accept that people think differently to you and it's not a particularly strange opinion.

Words like strange and odd are always thrown around to force people to agree, lest they be considered strange. It's very transparent.

I haven't stated any opinion so far, besides my main concern is for those wrongly accused.

Do you not think this man has already been more than adequately punished by spending three decades in prison with the death penalty hanging over him, to say nothing of the torture of the previous failed execution?

Actually it was a terrible read - because it is really badly written

As he lay there, he prepared himself for imminent death.....

He looked up at the fluorescent lights and was struck by how they formed the shape of a cross.....

Over 33 years on death row he had found faith, and he sang quietly to himself, “I’m not alone.”Blue Scrubs instructed the prison guards to flip the gurney backward so that the prisoner’s feet pointed towards the ceiling while his head bowed to the ground. Smith now found himself, curiously for a man of religion, in an inverse crucifixion......

I'm not talking about you specifically.

But yes, if someone is in favour of the death penalty, at best all I can say is that they must be incredibly stupid

I have read this morning that they have had trouble obtaining lethal injections, and so they've been considering other methods

how is this allowed to happen in this day and age? It’s inhumane.

Is it? Its not quite as inhumane killing an innocent woman for money though is it? She didn't even do anything to him, he just killed her because someone paid him to do so.

No sympanthy from me here.

I don't know. I have too many conflicting views on the death penalty, justice etc MH issues...

I'm just bloody glad I don't have to make any decisions.

also as a pp said, there are different reports as to what happened at his execution. I'm not convinced this is the most accurate one.

No one is saying that murder is ok or should go unpunished.

The issue is does the state have a right to take life and take it in such barbaric ways?

Doctors and nurses are not involved. The American medical association bans their participation.

Although execution states have passed laws that they cannot be prosecuted if they do.

So you have an anonymous 'IV team'.

Given the nature of the death suffered by someone who is gassed and the historical connotations of gassing people, it is indeed a strange opinion to find deliberate, cold-blooded gassing by the state acceptable. Yes, people are free to hold that opinion, others are absolutely free to think that it's a horrible opinion to hold.

A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.
Nelson Mandela.

So you believe in killing people to teach that killing people is wrong?

@Anisette Gassing is quite outdated, agree, but capital punishment in general I don't think is horrible, certainly not strange.

So you have an anonymous 'IV team'.

An IV team who repeatedly, sometimes for hours, stab away at necks and groins, occasionally piercing the odd artery or organ. This is torture, not justice.

Whilst I do think it appears to be an inhumane to end someone’s life I just can not feel any sorrow for a murderer. He has had 30+ more years on this earth than his poor victim.

Hanging is more humane, not sure why U.S doesn't use that instead for death row.
Re; to hamster peeps don't like to think about how their meat gets to the table, might put them off a bit. [life long veggie]

It is utterly hypocritical for a state to say that killing is a crime, only to kill cold-bloodedly itself. When it does so having made the person in question wait thirty years with this sentence hanging over them, and having previously tried and failed to execute him, its conduct is easily as inhumane, and puts the state on a lower level morally than the people it condemns.