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

As I posted up thread it does still happen. Cameron Willingham. It happened in 2004. It still happened even after evidence was produced that he was innocent. But only to poor people..

I'll preface this by saying that I oppose the death penalty.

I am a former prison nurse, and I have seen many deaths and near deaths from hypoxia eg low blood oxygen levels.

The thrashing around and twitching is very normal during hypoxia. It's the reason why many suicide attempts with a ligature fail, the thrashing often alerts someone.

That being said, I do not think there is any room for the death penalty in today's suicide, whether the method is "humane" or not.

Drug companies will not sell the required medications for the death penalty. That's why they are looking at alternative methods.

Doesn't put me off! And not all of its bad.

Personally, I think that if you are in favour of the death penalty, you clearly think murder is OK, it's just a matter of circumstances. I don't.

No because life imprisonment could do that.

But society is already protected if they are imprisoned and not ever getting out again

There is a non lethal way to prevent criminals from reoffending - imprisonment.

Revenge is the only purpose of the death penalty because we know that:

• It's not preventative - the victim isn't coming back and the alternative is life without parole
• It's not a deterent - there aren't lower numbers of murders in states with the death penalty
• It doesn't even save money - it's much more expensive to house on Death Row, go through the various judicial stages and then kill a prisoner than it is to lock them up for life
• Sometimes later on the state will discover they've executed an innocent person (and given the lengths that are required to overturn a conviction, it's not unreasonable to assume it happens more than is know about) so it's not even necessarily fulfilling the criteria of revenge

I can’t speak for anyone else @JohnMytton but I find killing to be wrong in any and all circumstances. Sometimes the police kill a terrorist- this is not the aim or intention. I can see how it is sometimes unavoidable. That’s not the same thing as saying that it is justified.

But equally,

Life imprisonment doesn't bring anyone back from the dead either, nobody expects execution to result in divine resurrection of victims

Life imprisonment isn't enough to deter murderers, nothing is, not even torture like in centuries gone by. Punishment still needs to exist though it doesn't stop it from happening

It's good that people can go through an appeals process and we shouldn't be cutting costs there,l

If it was used a lot more sparingly as a punishment in a minute number of exceptional cases, the issue of wrongful execution would be pretty much nil

Just giving an alternative perspective!

Perhaps this may put off a man from assaulting or murdering an innocent woman. Because that's what this scumbag did. Not sure why people are so bothered about his few minutes of suffering.

Glad the state takes the murder of women seriously, unlike in the UK.

Most people don't support killing but accept it happens in desperate circumstances such as war or police disarming a terrorist.

I don't think it's a very good point in the context of this thread. I think it's a bit of a straw man tbh, because I can't really see anyone saying that killing is wrong in all circumstances here.

The death penalty is useless for anything except revenge on any measure - yes, it removed the bad uns permanently but that's an issue if you eventually find out they weren't actually a bad un, or at least not in the particular circumstances you convicted them. Safer to imprison them.

It gives a really rubbish signal re: how serious society considers murder. We know that most of the people who are found innocent were done so because of inadequate investigation, misconduct on the part of law enforcement, prejudice etc, etc. If society really cared about murders facing their just desserts then they'd want to make sure they had the right person - in each case someone else is free to continue breaking the law.

Criminals show us that they agree that it's giving a really rubbish signal because they keep on killing - it's not a deterent.

It is popular though... maybe that helps to get to the bottom of why it remains on the statue books of a country where most people involved in the process are elected.

It literally doesn't though, as he wouldn't have killed his victim would he? 🤯

Many people know full well how meat gets put on the table & don't care.

He killed a stranger for money. This would get maximum penalty in the UK. There's a very long way to go in both UK and US to address partner and sexual violence.

we clearly haven’t moved on though, have we?

or crimes where people murder / r@pe / torture themselves wouldn’t happen.

i imagine it is more so closure to the poor woman’s family, and may put people off committing heinous crimes in the first place.

The death penalty is a barbaric punishment and looking at murder rates, shows no deterrent to serious crime. Any country who executes its citizens is not civilised.

Has that gone up since the death penalty was completely abolished though?

I have to say it does make me uneasy that so many people seem to like the idea of state-sanctioned murder

Alabama: 7.3 homicides per 100k people
UK: 1.2 homicides per 100k people

So the death penalty isn't really working out for them. Even if you compare US states so that the gun issue isn't so much of a confounder: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/murder-rates/murder-rate-of-death-penalty-states-compared-to-non-death-penalty-states