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

what does this mean? if we don’t kill innocent people we are all better than the murderer…this man was not innocent.

I'm on the fence when it comes to the death penalty. Logically my brain says it's wrong for a multitude of reasons already stated, however there are some crimes I read about and I think absolutely that person should not be alive. One case in particular that haunts me is the murder of Kelly Anne Bates, what she endured before her murder was possibly one of the most horrific things I've ever read - I won't go into detail here because it's too gruesome but obviously Google if you're interested. If Kelly Anne Bates had been a family member of mine I'd have wanted to torture her killer to death myself!

Data to support my position

deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/murder-rates/murder-rate-of-death-penalty-states-compared-to-non-death-penalty-states

I think it varies state to state- says online that some states require a physician to be present.
I'm surprised the guards have to volunteer for it- you would think it would be accepted as part of the role, if you work in a facility that executes inmates.
Ok, if not an anaesthetist, somebody else other than this one person trying and not being successful at getting a line in repeatedly. I'm sure there must be more efficient ways for all involved.
The whole set up sounds completely horrendous to me.

It doesn't act as a deterrent, there's reams of evidence for this.

America is so fucked up on this issue. Supposed to be a civilised nation but in this (and some other things) just as bad as barbaric places like Saudi Arabia and Iran.

TW and long.

My younger brother was murdered 18 years ago this coming August. He was stabbed repeatedly in his back over 16 times by a friend who was unstable and took offence to something so trivial it cost my brother his life and left his children fatherless. I still wouldn't want this man dead. As it was he got off on a technicality of the British justice system that if there's no option for the jury to convict on manslaughter and only a murder option they have no choice but to let him walk. This was despite him standing in the dock describing the events that had happened and the proof that my brother had not only been beaten to the ground by the man's brother and dad, he was then stabbed so much that the doctors were trying on multiple occasions to stitch up his wounds for two weeks before he succumbed to his injuries. He spent the last week of his life undergoing many operations. His bowel had been perforated that many times that he would have been having his faeces coming out of any orifice including his mouth and he would have had to live with a stoma for the rest of his life. He knew he was going to die. He sent a message through a nurse to me over the phone the night before he was put into an induced coma that he loved me. I'll never ever get over it or telling my mum that her son had died. He was 28. The man now has a new life and a child. I have no idea where he is. I would have loved him to be imprisoned for the rest of his life in whatever capacity as he claimed mental health was the cause of his outburst. So a secure hospital or prison. But I have never wanted him dead. Not at the hands of any sort of justice system. He needs to pay but not to be killed. It won't being Alan back and it won't make any of us feel better. He definitely needs life in prison.

I'm reminded of when Fred West took his own life in prison, and of prisoners asking for the death penalty themselves. The answer from the revenge crowd is often outrage that the coward then gets the easy way out, instead of facing up to their punishment and getting years of the nonce treatment in prison they richly deserve.

i feel no sympathy watsoever

if it’s done quickly or over minutes or hours i don’t care

he deserved it

Yeah - I'd only seen the headlines for this (not in the mood for a death penalty debate) and couldn't understand what was so "cruel" about it. Nitrogen hypoxia induces feelings of drunkenness and, some say, euphoria before quietly doing you in. It's the method of choice for a drama-free suicide.

Either the prison fucked it up (again) or he found a way to be an arse about it.

This. I 100 per cent support death by hanging but gassing someone is sick. I understand a Jewish organisation said it is an affront to them. I'm not Jewish but I totally agree.

The death penalty IS a deterrent though, in that the executed prisoner Will never be released to kill again. There are plenty of cases knocking around where the perpetrator has been paroled only to commit another murder. Life should mean life and its good to see recent cases in the UK where whole life sentences have been imposed.
It's just a shame we have to feed and house the fuckers for many years to come 😡

I do think that some people on death row could possibly have been rehabilitated but do the crime, pay the penalty i guess.

I caught a couple of seconds of something on TV this morning, have just done a bit of Googling, and I found this:

' The United Nations has designated January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, as International Holocaust Remembrance Day—a time to remember the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and the millions of other victims of Nazi persecution. In 2024, the commemoration coincides with a surge in antisemitism worldwide. '

Whilst seeing a tiny bit of something similar on TV and knowing about the proposed execution, and also now knowing it had gone ahead.

My thought was ' How could ' we ' have gone so far backwards ! ' it was barbaric ( to put it mildly ) then !!!

Surely if Dignitas in Switzerland can enable/allow/assist death with dignity, then the USA's choice should/could/ought to be better...

it doesn’t matter if they could be rehabilitated

they shouldn’t get the chance to because their victims didn’t

i’ve worked in a prison full time for over 20 years. VAST majority go out with same or worse mindset and attitude than they come in with

Whole life sentences whilst seem good, actually put others at risk. The whole prison system works on behaviour and reward etc. there is hope of release. If a prisoner went in knowing he was never getting out can you imagine how dangerous that place would be for staff and other prisoners? they’d have nothing to lose in killing someone everyday!

i certainly wouldn’t want to work my day job with a full long term lifer

It's barbaric and unnecessary. We haven't executed anyone in the uk for 60 years. Is the crime rate higher than US? No! The US is deranged. Giving guns to school teachers and putting people down like dogs. Just hope the jury was correct and it was the right person because that's been incorrect more times that is acceptable.

Hanging doesn't have great optics in the Southern US states where it was the method of extrajudicial "justice". Given the racial mix of death row prisoners, it's easy to see how it would bring back memories of lynching.

It's also a method that gets very messy if botched. There's not actually that many executions so it would be difficult for someone to become an expert. They'd maybe need a Pierrepoint figure who went about the death penalty states doing the measuring/knot positioning/dispatching.

Maybe they could come up with a machine to automate hanging like they've tried to sanitise and automate via electric chairs and lethal injections. Or they could just guillotine them - quick, foolproof..

If you can't get venous access to euthanise a cat you can inject direct into the kidney. It takes a few seconds longer but is peaceful. A lot of the issue seems to be that drug companies are unwilling to supply drugs for the purpose of killing people.

But we don’t let the risk of an innocent death stand in the way of other things, as it would mean society couldn’t function.

Society can function perfectly well without the death penalty so the comparison fails. There is no measure AFAIK that suggests citizens are safer or have any other material advantage in a society that has it over those that don’t.

Your assertion that innocent people being killed not is not an obstacle to having the DP is breathtaking when - as per the above - there are alternatives. Innocent people are freed from prison, but they don’t come back from the dead.

Your arguments rely on the death penalty being crucial for the proper running of society, when it clearly isn’t.

It seems so barbaric to have to come up for new ways to kill people. And the US will wag its finger at countries that use the firing squad or beheading - both over and done with in seconds. That Guardian article said the previous time they tried to kill this prisoner, by injecting drugs, he was strapped to a gurney for four hrs.

Nitrogen has been touted as a painless way for people to kill themselves for ages. I’m pretty sure it started out in Australia. Essentially it diluted the oxygen in the blood stream. Makes you feel relaxed/ drunk then you go to sleep.

Possibly the thrashing was due to him holding his breath or involuntary muscle spasms. I don’t think it sounds like a bad way to go tbh

Exactly. Seeing out the rest of your days incarcerated alongside dangerous criminals who hate your guts is a fate worse than death to me.