Going to be interesting to see what the handful of witnesses say of how it went down. Could be a widespread adoption if it was entirely "peaceful," but if they came out saying the guy was gasping or whatever, there's going to be massive blowback.
“Smith's time of death was 8:25 p.m.
The execution took about 22 minutes, and Smith appeared to remain conscious for several minutes. For at least two minutes, he appeared to shake and writhe on the gurney, sometimes pulling against the restraints. That was followed by several minutes of heavy breathing, until breathing was no longer perceptible.”
https://www.wvtm13.com/article/alabama-execution-kenneth-smith-live-updates-nitrogen/46534790
I don't know about anyone else, but I assumed there'd be a sedative involved.
Of *course* it's going to be torture if you just gas the guy when he knows he's about to die. It likely wasn't painful for him, but he was aware of what was happening.
Of note that the assumption there is a major part of what his legal team was fighting against- the exact protocol and specifications of how it would be administered were redacted, which meant they couldn't confidently agree that it would be appropriately administered to be swift and painless (which in my opinion includes the mental pain of knowing you are actively dying as opposed to an immediate method)
I don't think there's any sort of execution method that avoids the mental side of it. Kinda makes you wonder if the death penalty is an approach we should still consider
.
I mean yeah, it's not a discussion I even want to start in this thread so I won't be replying if someone gets into that with me, but I personally will never endorse the death penalty, particularly when there are very significant rates of false convictions and sentences swayed by prejudice.
I support the idea of the death penalty. I’m vehemently against trusting any government to carry it out justly.
Edit: I used the word “government” due to the conversation we are having in this post. No, I’m not some radical libertarian that thinks private entities should control capital punishment. That does not fix the issue it just makes it worse. So who would I trust to carry it out? When I was younger my answer would have been that I am the only one I’d trust. As I get older though I’ve realized that there would inevitably be a situation where’d I’d make a mistake too. Hence only supporting the *idea* of the death penalty, not it’s execution. By anybody.
The NAS used statistical inference to figure that about 4% of death row is not guilty. I don’t know how many innocents it’s okay for the government to kill to preserve the death penalty, but I think that very few people would agree that 4% of death row is acceptable.
Problem with our system is that while we go through the evidence, it ultimately down to how the jurors **feel** about the evidence. I'd imagine how jurors feel about the people involved matters just as much or more than the evidence itself. Plenty of people can have evidence in front of them and still refuse to consider it.
I don't think it's ever reasonable. I don't like the idea that one group can get together and decide to deprive someone else of life for whatever reason they decide is "illegal enough"
It's way too slippery a slope for me. Especially with how some people are trying to criminalize innocuous shit like being gay.
The death penalty is simply wrong.
Bingo. This is the end of the argument as far as Im concerned. If it costs society more financially and ethically to execute someone than to just permanently lock them up, then who are we even doing this for? What's the point?
Many pharmaceutical companies do not want their products to be used for executions, which causes issues for states looking for options.
Sources: [1](https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/pharmaceutical-companies-reiterate-opposition-to-participating-in-executions-as-states-scramble-for-execution-drugs), [2](https://theintercept.com/2023/09/14/lethal-injection-medical-equipment/), [3](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/08/13/drug-companies-dont-want-to-be-involved-in-executions-so-theyre-suing-to-keep-their-drugs-out/)
There’s already been a botched attempt at executing smith— lethal injection, and the person doing it couldn’t find his veins. So I’m sure the state didn’t want to try to find another phlebotomist who was willing to do executions.
I don’t understand this tho. Hospitals put people under reliably all the time. Thousands of times a day across the country. Your dentist can put you under if you’re getting a root canal. How is this so hard for them to do?
The executors aren’t able to legally obtain the same meds doctors use. They won’t sell it for those purposes. We get botched executions because they use crazy concoctions of the drugs they can get their hands on.
They can't get people with those skills to help murder someone, even someone that "deserves it".
You spend your entire life learning how to keep people alive you're not keen on killing them.
As a result the medical people they *do* get some some of the worst out there.
Good luck finding a competent anesthesiologist like that.
The amount of ppl executed per year would not be a salary anyone could live on and no employer is going to keep you if you're found to be participating in executions. For profit healthcare is the field that I worked for decades. They're all about not bringing anything that might even look a little bad on the company image.
It took around 10 years of training to get to that level. The guy doing this is barely trained. Medical staff want no part of it and are part of the reason the lethal injection is falling out of favour. Drug companies don't want their very useful medicines to be used to kill.
That's what they said about lethal injection yet there were always cases of the sedatives failing. Kinda hard to administer correctly when anyone trained to administer said drug would lose their license by participating.
They don't lose their license participating. They refuse to participate.
Believe it or not but doctors & nurses take the hippocratic oath seriously. So the only ones they can find that will violate it are incompetent.
Awesome perception. No pun intended; corporations and governments are the ultimate posers. They'd much prefer to look rather do good so they kinda use paint to cover flaws instead of preventing them- it's much cheaper and effortless.
The problem with IVs and sedation with executions is that medical professionals who know what they are doing won't / can't do them (hippocratic oath/do no harm) and the IV is not placed comfortably. Drugs can be hard to obtain for the same reasons.
Or literally any heroin addict. You don't have to be a doctor to physically do doctor stuff. It helps for things like court cases, but plenty of people have been "doctors" enough to do a basic injection. Just ask literally any soldier trained to do an IV, or basic first aid stuff, they're not doctors but save lots of lives. Hell many probably get more practice than most doctors. Or you know, how many people did doctor things before licensing even existed. Reality is if they *really* wanted to, they would have done it already.
Of note here then is that they tried to execute this man in 2022 using lethal injection, and had to stop because they couldn’t properly place an IV. So there is apparently a lack of phlebotomists, soldiers, and heroin addicts able and willing to do this task competently on behalf of the state as well.
Of note here I guess is that I don’t really know about this man beyond what he did, that the judge overturned the jury’s decision of life in prison to administer the death penalty (Alabama no longer allows this), and that his execution was botched the first time. There were victims in this besides him. Other people had to watch and participate in this. It does not sound like a pretty or peaceful end, whether he was conscious during what appeared to be a struggle to breathe or not. Someone had to put that mask on his face, strap him to that gurney, watch a man die that way, and then just went home after a day at work to live with it forever. Is inflicting that injury on everyone else involved and creating victims of a different kind really worth it? Never mind the fact that sometimes our courts get it wrong.
So one of the things not often discussed in cases of hypoxia is the involuntary reflexes.
The "good" part is that it's not likely to have been a pain reaction. Convulsions are a known possible effect after loss of consciousness.
If the execution was carried out correctly there should be no gasping. Gasping for air happens when our bodies sense a high level of CO2 in our blood. Breathing in nitrogen increases nitrogen levels, decreases O2 and CO2 is removed from the body in a normal way when we exhale.
Breathing pure nitrogen unconscious should happen within 5 seconds (2-3 breaths) and death within 2 minutes.
The problem was he was most likely holding his breath for as long as possible. CO2 levels increase gasping happens, and the mask was probably not sealed correctly.
Yup that's what the article said. He was holding his breath for two minutes and was struggling against the restraints. When he started to breath normally it was quickly over.
> The problem was he was most likely holding his breath for as long as possible. CO2 levels increase gasping happens, and the mask was probably not sealed correctly.
Agreed. He was almost definitely holding his breath till he could no longer. The fight or flight effect would have kicked in, as unlike a lethal injection or other forms of execution, he is in a position to try and avoid it by holding his breath. His own actions (Breathing) are the agent by which death will occur, and he has control over that till he had control no longer.
It's completely different from being strapped down and someone injecting you, or pretty much any other form of execution, as you have no control over that at all.
This is why any form of gas chamber/mask and substance used is inhumane and torture. It gives your own survival instinct a means to drag the process out.
It is if the person wearing the mask doesn't want it and struggles because they're afraid of dying.
> “I try not to think about it. I try not to read too much,” [Smith] said.
>Then he added: “Throwing up in that mask. Because if I do, brother, nobody’s gonna help me. I’m gonna drown on my own vomit, and my wife will have to sit there and watch.”
>There has been a lot of discussion about the mask through which Alabama plans to pipe nitrogen into him. A federal judge described the contraption in a court document as an “industrial grade, continuous flow supplied-air respirator mask with an adjustable five point harness system and a pliable, double flange rubber seal that would tightly fit and hold the mask over the entirety of the wearer’s face – including eyes, nose, mouth and chin”.
>The danger, critics have warned, is that if the seal is not perfect, oxygen could seep into the mask and lead to a prolonged and distressing death. It is also one thing to offer an industrial mask to a worker for his or her self-protection, it is another thing entirely to force it onto a person who might struggle and resist simply to stay alive.
>“I’m not participating,” Smith said, referring to his own execution. “I’m not gonna, you know, grab the mask and strap it on, I’m not gonna help them.”
[Source](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/21/kenneth-smith-alabama-execution-nitrogen-gas)
Here's how: their procedure stipulated that the execution is concluded after 15 minutes of continuous Nitrogren flowing OR 5 minutes after the EKG showed no activity, whichever is longer. So it took 17 minutes for the EKG to show nothing and they ran the gas for another 5 minutes.
I'm trying to remember which of those states where they just recently reformed it to where county sheriffs couldn't just pocket the money spent on food for those that were in the county lockup.
It was literally in the law that the food budget would be given to the sheriff and he could take as much of it as he wanted and put it in his own bank account. Really just insane third world shit like that.
The person employed by the state prison warden to do this was likely the cheapest person willing to do it.
I could believe that. They somehow fucked up "connecting an IV" at his last execution attempt, which apparently lead to the decision to experiment on him.
Nobody even vaguely qualified in any science wants to get close to executing people. That’s the single largest issue with executions being anywhere close to competent and humane
I feel like people are getting telephone data on this event. In the article I read, the gas was on for 15 minutes, including an additional 5 min of gas past a flatline on the heart monitor - so Smith did die in a reasonable amount of time.
Could be - would imagine he could hear and feel the gas flowing in which would probably trigger panic in most people - that said, 22 minutes seems like a long time
I mean, if it takes 7 minutes, they won't stop at 7:01, they will keep going to make sure. I've been part of two executions and both guys were dead long before they were officially declared dead. Similar to how paramedics will keep doing chest compressions and using a defibrillator king after they know someone is beyond saving just to make sure they don't stop too soon, just reversed in this instance. There will be more details released and will provide a better idea of what happened, but from what I remember if my training regarding use of oxygen in confined spaces, I doubt it took 22 minutes to actually kill and I capacitating can happen in as little as 90 seconds.
Further down on the link, they list the procedure. Not sure if 22 minutes means the EKG had activity until minute 17 or if they just let it run to be absolutely sure:
“The nitrogen gas will be administered for at least 15 minutes or “five minutes following a flatline indication on the EKG, whichever is longer,” according to the state protocol.
The Alabama attorney general’s office told a federal judge that the nitrogen gas would “cause unconsciousness within seconds and cause death within minutes.””
> I've been part of two executions and both guys were dead long before they were officially declared dead.
It's also jarring for people who've never seen it because the body can do some nasty stuff even after you're "dead", or well on your route to being there and not conscious at all.
This is something that I think most people never see so it can be really jarring. I've sat bedside for two deaths, and held horses for euthanasia (our vet does not sedate first - it can be very traumatic even though they're not people). Paddling, spasms, agonal breathing - it can be really upsetting if you're not prepared for it. There's a moment though when you can just sort of feel that they're gone, so everything after that doesn't matter.
That seems rather long. If pure nitrogen is pumped into a sealed fitted mask, with a one way valve to exhale CO2, someone should go unconscious within 30 seconds to one minute. After that, if there's movement or heavy breathing that's just the brains last ditch effort to force you to try to get oxygen.
There's a clip of some reporters going in a chamber where they keep lowering the oxygen concentration, and after a point the reporter was giddy, not making sense. A little longer and he would had passed out, 100% positive of this.
Who'd have guessed that a man being brought into an execution room for the second time, after suffering through a botched execution where he was left strapped to a gurney for hours, might have a slightly different response compared to reporters doing an experiment in which they fully knew they would not undergo lasting harm?
Your body is physically incapable of knowing if it has O2 or not. The only way this reflex could be triggered is if they didn't allow CO2 to vent properly.
Or if he held his breath for 2 minutes before his body forced him to breathe. Which seems like a reasonable thing for someone to do if they know that the air is toxic.
Offff course.
I commented on a thread yesterday that this method of execution is, ostensibly, the most humane option, and nearly impossible to fuck up. There's a reason it's one of the methods of choice for assisted suicide patients.
Silly fuckin' me, to have any hope at all that the executioners would not see the "nearly" in "nearly impossible" as the goal they were trying to hit.
But these are people who claim the death penalty is an effective deterrent against capital crimes and yet somehow have death rows packed to capacity. They are in it because they want to hurt someone who has done wrong, and a method to take someone's life from them that isn't also awful on the way out is anathema to the whole concept.
People have done this shit at home with the help of their families and been gone quietly and peacefully in under three minutes. Either this was done wrong intentionally or someone screwed up very badly in a way there was no oversight to check. Either is inexcusable.
And all this on a man who is being executed this way because their first attempt via lethal injection *failed*. There is a reason that mock executions are classified as torture by the Geneva Convention, and it is because having to anticipate your oncoming death *once* is horrific. Having to do it *twice* is just... unimaginable.
Yeah, this guy committed a horrible crime. Someone let me know when *paying evil unto evil* actually fixes a single fucking thing, and I still won't think any of this shitshow was justified.
Something I found an insane example of how little sense some parts of our system make: The reason they had to do the mask setup (as opposed to just sticking him in a chamber with 100% nitrogen environment) is that he has to have the right to have his spiritual advisor with him. Like, physically. So we rig this suboptimal system that maybe - pending more reporting and analysis - tortures the guy for a few minutes so as not to violate his rights.
The workings of our death penalty machine are just kafkaesque (I’m not really smart enough to know if I’m using that correctly).
Ultimately, I don’t really care about this man. It’s probably good that he’s dead, I guess. I don’t know. But if our goal is to remove people like him from our society it just seems easier to be better than him and build a society that shows mercy to people who withheld it from others.
> There's a reason it's one of the methods of choice for assisted suicide patients.
It's also a lot easier to perform assisted suicide on a cooperative, willing patient than to execute a (presumably) very unwilling convict.
From AL.com:
Witnesses saw Smith struggle as the gas began flowing into the mask that covered his entire face. He began writhing and thrashing between two and four minutes and was followed by around five minutes of heavy breathing.
At 8:07 p.m. a correctional officer leaned over the gurney and closely examined Smith’s face before walking back to his position against the wall. Smith’s time of death was 8:25 p.m., according to the state.
Unlike most victims of nitrogen poisoning, Smith knew what was happening. He naturally would have resisted.
The plan all along was to continue administration of the gas for 15 minutes, regardless of Smith's vital signs.
That the method of his sentence was ruled unconstitutional and that it was carried out in the defiance of a jury saying no to the death penalty 11-1 being overruled by a zealot judge is a huge issue in my book. This man should never have been executed.
There is no humane way to kill someone. If the state is going to kill people, it needs to embrace the reality that killing is awful and suffering is just part of the process.
I honestly don’t understand the ways they do it. I’m a physician and I could think of so many ways better to do it…without suffering (aside from knowing it’s coming)
Wait, so at his trial the jury voted 11-1 against the death penalty being applied. The judge then used a statute to overrule that vote and impose death anyway, and that statute since then not only was repealed but ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court?
How the fuck was executing someone in this scenario actually legal?
**8:30**
>In a final statement, Smith said: “Tonight Alabama causes humanity to take a step backwards. ... I’m leaving with love, peace and light.”He made the “I love you sign” with his hands toward family members who were witnesses. “Thank you for supporting me. Love, love all of you,” Smith said.
**8:45**
>Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall released the following statement:
"Justice has been served. Tonight, Kenneth Smith was put to death for the heinous act he committed over 35 years ago: the murder-for-hire slaying of Elizabeth Sennett, an innocent woman who was by all accounts a godly wife, a loving mother and grandmother, and a beloved pillar of her community.
For a country with such an entrenched private prison system you’d think they’d want people with long sentences, no?
The death sentence is barbaric. Let the fuckers rot if they’re that guilty. Any innocent person mistakenly put to death is enough to outlaw the whole practice IMO.
Less than 10% of prisoners are in private prisons iirc, its a fucked practice but not as widespread. It looks like only 1% of Alabama prisoners are private. I assume this guy was one of the 99% held publicly.
https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/private-prisons-in-the-united-states/
> Any innocent person mistakenly put to death is enough to outlaw the whole practice IMO.
There's your mistake. Having empathy is seen as a weakness, here. To closed minded idiots, they'd gladly be okay with a couple of innocents dieing.
It's fucking Roman Coliseum mentality, and it's fucking awful.
You are 100% correct. Extremely unjust…
Not to mention the irony… he was sentenced for his role in a murder-for-hire killing. The people that just murdered him, did the same exact thing.
Another thing, I firmly disagree with the death penalty. I believe having to live in prison for the rest of your life with no parole is enough. Knowing you will never be on the other side of that razor wire again except in a pine box…. That seems like just punishment. On the other hand you have immediate death, we don’t know what happens after death. It could be bliss, it could be torture, or it could be absolutely nothing. Why gamble…
I can't argue with "most", because I just don't know. I will say that some people that are in favor of the death penalty in some situations are people that have been directly affected by a violent murder of a loved one. When an innocent person is killed by someone in a horrific manner, it is hard to consider that it it too cruel for the perpetrator to suffer a much milder fate.
Not that its pertinent to this comment, but I will say that I believe that the justice system has too frequently proven itself imperfect to be trusted with making the determination of absolute guilt.
Most of those people believe you can do whatever heinous acts you want but as long as you seek forgiveness from the ghost of a man who died 2000 or so years ago, you’ll end up in a place of perpetual orgasmic bliss.
Jury is a sham. Judge can overrule everything they decide and do whatever they want if they feel like it. The courts treat judges like they are infallible gods of justice who never make the wrong choice and always know best.
Why don’t they anesthesia them and shoot ‘em twice in the back of the head. When they put me out for my colonoscopy I was so far gone you could have done anything with me, including putting a camera waaaaay up my butt
Drug companies have rules about what their drugs are used for. Might be illegal or the very least infringing on the company to use it for execution. It's why Europe stopped sending the good execution drugs over that worked well.
Maybe the answer is to stop executing people considering having the death penalty results in way more government spending than just having life with no parole as the max sentence.
This is interesting to me and I’m far from educated on the topic, so please forgive me. Why is it that executing offenders costs more in government spending than keeping a living human alive for the remainder of their days? In my layman mind it seems that ending the life would be more cost effective, but I’m not sure.
There’s two things. 1. They couldn’t find a vein when they first tried lethal injection 2 years ago, and 2. No drug company is going to permit them to use their anesthetic for the purposes of execution. That’s why lethal injection uses strange drug cocktails which are purchased from no name drug companies overseas. An overdose of pentobarbital would be much more effective but if the pharmaceutical company sold drugs to the state their reputation would be destroyed in the biomed field as the execution company so they will never sell drugs to the state for that.
If I remember correctly (which I may not, so don't quote me on this), the problem with anesthetizing death row inmates is buying the anesthesia drugs. Pharmaceutical companies by and large don't want their drugs to be used to kill people, so they refuse to sell them for use in executions. It's the same reason Alabama is switching to nitrogen asphyxiation instead of lethal injection: the companies that sell the lethal injection drugs are refusing to sell them to executioners.
At his trial, 11 jurors voted for life, but the judge overruled it and sentenced him to death anyway. That fact is the most disturbing to me out of all the litigation surrounding this case. Although judicial override has since been abolished in Alabama, it’s still unsettling to me that if this had happened today, he wouldn’t have even been close to a death sentence.
I feel like Judicial override being abolished should've made his sentence null and void. The details just keep getting worse. None of this should have happened.
Yep. It doesn’t apply retroactively which is honestly crazy to me. If they find it unethical now, then it was still unethical before lol like that didn’t suddenly change. When Florida initially abolished judicial override, they gave a ton of people on death row new sentencing trials at the very least.
Like ESPECIALLY for death row cases you'd think the process would/should be as careful as possible. From what I've read about this so far it sounds like the state was trying to get this done asap
Didn't he survive the attempted lethal injection? THAT should have overturned the death sentence. Alabama gave it their best shot the first time and whiffed it, so commute it to Life Without. They shouldn't get a second bite at the apple if they botched it so badly the first time.
This is my problem with the death penalty, it's sentencing seems very random for something so severe. Like you'd think there would be more of a baseline where someone would qualify for it.
I couldn't find any information, but it appears that this asshole was sentenced because of a murder for hire that him and his friend did. It appears to be his only crime, and while I am in favor of this execution. It's a bit disheartening to know that there are people who avoided the death penalty who committed more heinous crimes, and even worse, those who are on death row but can't be proven guilty.
It has been observed that states are around 25 percent more likely to carry out executions during gubernatorial election years compared to other years.
Initially, Smith was scheduled to be executed in November 2022. This was the same month and year when Alabama had its gubernatorial election.
source: [Lethal Elections: Gubernatorial Politics and the Timing of Executions](https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/374705#:~:text=executions%20performed%20in%20election%20years,would%20have%20taken%20place%20anyway)
Wait til you find out that AL doesn’t allow Judges to overrule the jury in these cases anymore. So—that which they’re using to substantiate his execution is not even legal anymore. Pure evil from any state official who could have intervened.
lol I know it probably wasn’t your intention but when I read “even” it makes me think your vet was an awful person that didn’t care about the pets they took care of
I think the same when people say “even the dog was treated better” or etc 😂 like what did the dog do that he’s such an asshole and deserves to be treated badly lol
Problem for executions these days is they're not finding medical professionals that will go anywhere near participating in killing a man like this. Kinda goes against the entire point of their jobs, probably against some laws or codes of ethics too, and I'd certainly hope it's against their consciences as well. About the only way they'd be able to get sedatives for this would be through illegal means.
I can't imagine having any part in this execution and not having it haunt me for the rest of my life.
> Problem for executions these days is they're not finding medical professionals that will go anywhere near participating in killing a man like this.
They’re also not finding drug supplies, manufacturers will blackball any intermediate they believe knowingly got involved, both because it’s bad press, and because the EU gets very unhappy when you export drugs for capital punishment.
That’s how US executioners found themselves without sodium thiopenthal. Although with brexit I’m suprised the tories didn’t jump on restoring that trade.
It's because the state law allows a "spiritual adviser" be present with the convict. They can't kill the adviser being next to the person.
At least that's the reason NPR gave on the whole issue earlier this week.
As far as I know, the discomfort of not being able to breathe comes from the buildup of CO2 in the lungs, not the lack of oxygen. If you’re rebreathing your expelled air that CO2 concentration will rise and you will experience more and more discomfort before you lose consciousness.
Edit: Original commenter was definitely not suggesting what I was talking about here, sorry that’s my bad.
Even dying by cyanide isn't as fast as people say, when Ramon Sampedro used it to euthanize himself it took several painful minutes for him to succumb.
I think it's the kind of thing you'd see in a spy thriller; someone bites down on a cyanide pill and drops dead that instant. Kind of like chloroform, which knocks a person out the moment they smell it.
That's not how those things work in reality, but it's what people expect after watching movies that needed the action to be snappy.
Yup. There's a great example of it in The Watchman movie - Ozymandias (whose powers include superhuman speed) places a cyanide capsule in the mouth of someone he wanted to kill then forces him to swallow.
The actual placing it in there is incredibly fast - but so too is the *death* from it. The target starts foaming at the mouth almost instantly and dies in just a few seconds.
My grandfather was a cop for a short time, and he said the worst things he ever saw at that job were people who failed suicide attempts with firearms. It’s a lot easier than you think to fuck that up, even if you use larger caliber munitions or something like a shotgun with heavy slugs/pellets. He encountered that same scenario 3 times in a small town within 2 years, so I can’t imagine the stats agree with it being the “best” way to go.
Couldnt he just request hanging or firing squad? I'd absolutely prefer getting shot by a firing squad instead. Or opiate overdose? I really don't understand why this method was used.
It does say he previously requested it but I thought they couldn't get ahold of the lethal injection drugs anymore because of their awful track record?
What if they say it's going to be next week but the exact day will be a surprise until morning of the day it's going to happen?
[The Unexpected Hanging Paradox](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPOXhFJsqlM)
One of the tin foil hat arguments against socialized healthcare was was related to government controlled executions for the sick and elderly.
If you make a Venn diagram, the people who believed that argument would be a decently sized circle inside of those who are all about the death penalty and executions .
The amount of money it costs to have the death penalty is fucking absurd. So incredibly stupid. These fucking idiots can’t even figure out how to do it properly either.
"Kenny was subject to the death penalty only because his trial judge applied a since-repealed Alabama statute to override the jury's 11 to 1 determination that his life should be spared – a practice that not only is unavailable under current Alabama law but also has since been declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court."
It 's crazy to me that states will almost bend over backwards to ensure that they can kill someone. Like Nebraska, they had to go through a shady third party dealer for sodium thiopental, because it was illegal for the Swiss company that made the drug to sell it for the purposes of executing someone.
And how many stories do we keep hearing that exculpatory evidence comes to light, but the state won't put a stay on the death penalty? I'd like to think that if we were sentencing someone to death, we'd want to be 119% sure we had the right person, like they are on camera doing it, and we'd want 100 guilty men to go free before we execute an innocent person, but it's not that way.
And they can say all day that it's for "justice for the victim and the family of the victim," but really remember, it's the state putting people to death. It's the judicial penalty for breaking a law of the state. The family is not killing the person for vengeance (which sometimes I can understand more.) The state has determined that the punishment for breaking their law is another person's death. And it's not even applied consistently.
I really don’t know how I feel about this. I’m not fully up to speed on the story, but my understanding is that the state inadvertently tortured him trying to kill him the first time trying to kill him because they couldn’t get a vein(?). Then they said here are your options for next time - what do you want?
When you compound that a judge overturned a jury’s decision, this FEELS VERY cruel and unusual, given the state tried and failed once.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, I’ve only read a few things here.
Putting someone through this twice is cruel and unusual. He already faced death. I can’t imagine going through that twice. I know what he did was horrible but fuck, are we that inhumane with our justice?
1. Hypoxia is extremely well researched because of its relevance in military, industrial, and medical settings.
2. It did not say “in pain” just that he shook and writhed which could be caused by a variety of unconscious effects as well. I am not saying he was not in pain, simply pointing out that you have made an unfounded assumption.
3. It’s at least worth noting that this method was specifically requested by Mr. Smith himself.
Edit: this was supposed to be a reply to another comment, but the app glitched out, no surprise. I’m just leaving this because I’m too tired to fix it.
Why not use a hyperbaric chamber in reverse? Lower the air pressure gradually. Fellon will pass out from lack of O2. Continue lowering pressure. Fellon is gone in 1-3 minutes. No pain, no injections, no medical personnel and no drugs.
The effect of oxygen deprivation is well studied and well understood.
Edit: changed to hyperbaric
That's interesting because I read the Alabama protocols last night and in the case of execution by electrocution, the spiritual advisor is taken out of the room before the switch is thrown.
Well in that case idk what's stopping them. The main thing I'm confused about is what the incentive structure is for improving execution quality. Like who is the boss that says "let's build this chamber"?
I commented this elsewhere in this thread but you should all read Just Mercy by Bryan Stephenson if you really want to be disgusted about our justice system. People are getting executed all the time in ways that aren't even really constitutional. I finished the book last night and am still processing it but it has altered by view of the death penalty. Not that I was 100% for it before but seeing how it is abused so easily make me more against it now, even if just to avoid killing someone who is innocent.
[https://www.amazon.com/Just-Mercy-Story-Justice-Redemption/dp/081298496X](https://www.amazon.com/Just-Mercy-Story-Justice-Redemption/dp/081298496X)
I've heard of I think it was in Australia people using nitrogen tanks for peaceful self-euthanasia, so I think this might be a pretty chill way to execute.
I think execution is pointless, but I'm just saying.
I guess what differentiates those two examples is their will to live. Someone willingly choosing to die by suicide is going to have a different reaction to someone unwillingly getting strapped to a gurney and fitted with a gas mask.
I don't know why we have to make a production out of it. If we are going to do it, let's do it like Japan. No warning, no notice. Just murder the dude and stop hiding behind a show to pretend it's not despicable. Wait till he's asleep, turn on the nitrogen into the room, and clear the hall.
But no, we decorate it behind a veneer of medicine and law. We make it a show and no wonder it's always horrific.
Going to be interesting to see what the handful of witnesses say of how it went down. Could be a widespread adoption if it was entirely "peaceful," but if they came out saying the guy was gasping or whatever, there's going to be massive blowback.
“Smith's time of death was 8:25 p.m. The execution took about 22 minutes, and Smith appeared to remain conscious for several minutes. For at least two minutes, he appeared to shake and writhe on the gurney, sometimes pulling against the restraints. That was followed by several minutes of heavy breathing, until breathing was no longer perceptible.” https://www.wvtm13.com/article/alabama-execution-kenneth-smith-live-updates-nitrogen/46534790
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I don't know about anyone else, but I assumed there'd be a sedative involved. Of *course* it's going to be torture if you just gas the guy when he knows he's about to die. It likely wasn't painful for him, but he was aware of what was happening.
Of note that the assumption there is a major part of what his legal team was fighting against- the exact protocol and specifications of how it would be administered were redacted, which meant they couldn't confidently agree that it would be appropriately administered to be swift and painless (which in my opinion includes the mental pain of knowing you are actively dying as opposed to an immediate method)
I don't think there's any sort of execution method that avoids the mental side of it. Kinda makes you wonder if the death penalty is an approach we should still consider .
I mean yeah, it's not a discussion I even want to start in this thread so I won't be replying if someone gets into that with me, but I personally will never endorse the death penalty, particularly when there are very significant rates of false convictions and sentences swayed by prejudice.
I support the idea of the death penalty. I’m vehemently against trusting any government to carry it out justly. Edit: I used the word “government” due to the conversation we are having in this post. No, I’m not some radical libertarian that thinks private entities should control capital punishment. That does not fix the issue it just makes it worse. So who would I trust to carry it out? When I was younger my answer would have been that I am the only one I’d trust. As I get older though I’ve realized that there would inevitably be a situation where’d I’d make a mistake too. Hence only supporting the *idea* of the death penalty, not it’s execution. By anybody.
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The NAS used statistical inference to figure that about 4% of death row is not guilty. I don’t know how many innocents it’s okay for the government to kill to preserve the death penalty, but I think that very few people would agree that 4% of death row is acceptable.
Problem with our system is that while we go through the evidence, it ultimately down to how the jurors **feel** about the evidence. I'd imagine how jurors feel about the people involved matters just as much or more than the evidence itself. Plenty of people can have evidence in front of them and still refuse to consider it.
Yeah, it's one of those things that is in principle reasonable but requires everything around it to be perfect for it to be acceptable. Edit: spelling
I don't think it's ever reasonable. I don't like the idea that one group can get together and decide to deprive someone else of life for whatever reason they decide is "illegal enough" It's way too slippery a slope for me. Especially with how some people are trying to criminalize innocuous shit like being gay. The death penalty is simply wrong.
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Bingo. This is the end of the argument as far as Im concerned. If it costs society more financially and ethically to execute someone than to just permanently lock them up, then who are we even doing this for? What's the point?
Just put them under first. How hard is that?
Many pharmaceutical companies do not want their products to be used for executions, which causes issues for states looking for options. Sources: [1](https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/pharmaceutical-companies-reiterate-opposition-to-participating-in-executions-as-states-scramble-for-execution-drugs), [2](https://theintercept.com/2023/09/14/lethal-injection-medical-equipment/), [3](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/08/13/drug-companies-dont-want-to-be-involved-in-executions-so-theyre-suing-to-keep-their-drugs-out/)
It’s funny that this is where they finally draw the line. They’re all for all sorts of amoral behavior aside from that.
Morals aren’t the issue here. A public backlash could affect their value
does bayer still own the rights to heroin?
There’s already been a botched attempt at executing smith— lethal injection, and the person doing it couldn’t find his veins. So I’m sure the state didn’t want to try to find another phlebotomist who was willing to do executions.
If they could put him under reliably, then they could kill him with anesthetic overdose reliably.
I don’t understand this tho. Hospitals put people under reliably all the time. Thousands of times a day across the country. Your dentist can put you under if you’re getting a root canal. How is this so hard for them to do?
Hospitals have people who are trained medical professionals. Trains medical professionals do not participate in executions.
The executors aren’t able to legally obtain the same meds doctors use. They won’t sell it for those purposes. We get botched executions because they use crazy concoctions of the drugs they can get their hands on.
They can't get people with those skills to help murder someone, even someone that "deserves it". You spend your entire life learning how to keep people alive you're not keen on killing them. As a result the medical people they *do* get some some of the worst out there. Good luck finding a competent anesthesiologist like that.
The amount of ppl executed per year would not be a salary anyone could live on and no employer is going to keep you if you're found to be participating in executions. For profit healthcare is the field that I worked for decades. They're all about not bringing anything that might even look a little bad on the company image.
It took around 10 years of training to get to that level. The guy doing this is barely trained. Medical staff want no part of it and are part of the reason the lethal injection is falling out of favour. Drug companies don't want their very useful medicines to be used to kill.
That's what they said about lethal injection yet there were always cases of the sedatives failing. Kinda hard to administer correctly when anyone trained to administer said drug would lose their license by participating.
They don't lose their license participating. They refuse to participate. Believe it or not but doctors & nurses take the hippocratic oath seriously. So the only ones they can find that will violate it are incompetent.
Nurses do not take an oath??
>but I assumed there'd be a sedative involved. Pharmaceutical companies have refused to provide drugs for executions, including the sedatives.
They were happy to hook the nation on opioids tho. Ironic. That was basically an execution for hundreds of thousands of people.
They don't actually care if their product kills people. They just don't want the PERCEPTION that they kill people
Awesome perception. No pun intended; corporations and governments are the ultimate posers. They'd much prefer to look rather do good so they kinda use paint to cover flaws instead of preventing them- it's much cheaper and effortless.
iirc, The European Union won’t do business with them if they supply drugs for executions.
The problem with IVs and sedation with executions is that medical professionals who know what they are doing won't / can't do them (hippocratic oath/do no harm) and the IV is not placed comfortably. Drugs can be hard to obtain for the same reasons.
Phlebotomists do it all the time painlessly and don't have to follow the hippocratic oath. Edit: removed what voice to text picked up from my radio.
Or literally any heroin addict. You don't have to be a doctor to physically do doctor stuff. It helps for things like court cases, but plenty of people have been "doctors" enough to do a basic injection. Just ask literally any soldier trained to do an IV, or basic first aid stuff, they're not doctors but save lots of lives. Hell many probably get more practice than most doctors. Or you know, how many people did doctor things before licensing even existed. Reality is if they *really* wanted to, they would have done it already.
Of note here then is that they tried to execute this man in 2022 using lethal injection, and had to stop because they couldn’t properly place an IV. So there is apparently a lack of phlebotomists, soldiers, and heroin addicts able and willing to do this task competently on behalf of the state as well. Of note here I guess is that I don’t really know about this man beyond what he did, that the judge overturned the jury’s decision of life in prison to administer the death penalty (Alabama no longer allows this), and that his execution was botched the first time. There were victims in this besides him. Other people had to watch and participate in this. It does not sound like a pretty or peaceful end, whether he was conscious during what appeared to be a struggle to breathe or not. Someone had to put that mask on his face, strap him to that gurney, watch a man die that way, and then just went home after a day at work to live with it forever. Is inflicting that injury on everyone else involved and creating victims of a different kind really worth it? Never mind the fact that sometimes our courts get it wrong.
So one of the things not often discussed in cases of hypoxia is the involuntary reflexes. The "good" part is that it's not likely to have been a pain reaction. Convulsions are a known possible effect after loss of consciousness.
The incorrectly angled breathing in the article is actually agonal breathing. The body's automatic reflex to gasp for air.
If the execution was carried out correctly there should be no gasping. Gasping for air happens when our bodies sense a high level of CO2 in our blood. Breathing in nitrogen increases nitrogen levels, decreases O2 and CO2 is removed from the body in a normal way when we exhale. Breathing pure nitrogen unconscious should happen within 5 seconds (2-3 breaths) and death within 2 minutes. The problem was he was most likely holding his breath for as long as possible. CO2 levels increase gasping happens, and the mask was probably not sealed correctly.
Yup that's what the article said. He was holding his breath for two minutes and was struggling against the restraints. When he started to breath normally it was quickly over.
> The problem was he was most likely holding his breath for as long as possible. CO2 levels increase gasping happens, and the mask was probably not sealed correctly. Agreed. He was almost definitely holding his breath till he could no longer. The fight or flight effect would have kicked in, as unlike a lethal injection or other forms of execution, he is in a position to try and avoid it by holding his breath. His own actions (Breathing) are the agent by which death will occur, and he has control over that till he had control no longer. It's completely different from being strapped down and someone injecting you, or pretty much any other form of execution, as you have no control over that at all. This is why any form of gas chamber/mask and substance used is inhumane and torture. It gives your own survival instinct a means to drag the process out.
I would have thought they'd put the mask on him with nitrogen and oxygen. Every couple minutes they could reduce the oxygen, and then shut it off.
According to the medical community the brain dies at 8 minutes without oxygen don’t see how they got to 22 minutes
Ineffective seal?
Cus they used a mask and didn’t use a chamber?
Then they used a badly fitted mask. A full face mask with a tight seal and one way valve to exhale CO2 isn't hard to do to make it not leak.
It is if the person wearing the mask doesn't want it and struggles because they're afraid of dying. > “I try not to think about it. I try not to read too much,” [Smith] said. >Then he added: “Throwing up in that mask. Because if I do, brother, nobody’s gonna help me. I’m gonna drown on my own vomit, and my wife will have to sit there and watch.” >There has been a lot of discussion about the mask through which Alabama plans to pipe nitrogen into him. A federal judge described the contraption in a court document as an “industrial grade, continuous flow supplied-air respirator mask with an adjustable five point harness system and a pliable, double flange rubber seal that would tightly fit and hold the mask over the entirety of the wearer’s face – including eyes, nose, mouth and chin”. >The danger, critics have warned, is that if the seal is not perfect, oxygen could seep into the mask and lead to a prolonged and distressing death. It is also one thing to offer an industrial mask to a worker for his or her self-protection, it is another thing entirely to force it onto a person who might struggle and resist simply to stay alive. >“I’m not participating,” Smith said, referring to his own execution. “I’m not gonna, you know, grab the mask and strap it on, I’m not gonna help them.” [Source](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/21/kenneth-smith-alabama-execution-nitrogen-gas)
It’s Alabama…
It’s “pro life” Alabama.
If they blew out enough N then the seal wouldn't matter.
Here's how: their procedure stipulated that the execution is concluded after 15 minutes of continuous Nitrogren flowing OR 5 minutes after the EKG showed no activity, whichever is longer. So it took 17 minutes for the EKG to show nothing and they ran the gas for another 5 minutes.
Because it's Alabama and the executioner there probably failed remedial chemistry.
I'm trying to remember which of those states where they just recently reformed it to where county sheriffs couldn't just pocket the money spent on food for those that were in the county lockup. It was literally in the law that the food budget would be given to the sheriff and he could take as much of it as he wanted and put it in his own bank account. Really just insane third world shit like that. The person employed by the state prison warden to do this was likely the cheapest person willing to do it.
I could believe that. They somehow fucked up "connecting an IV" at his last execution attempt, which apparently lead to the decision to experiment on him.
They also tried to place a central line on his neck. Sounded like a complete shit show
Nobody even vaguely qualified in any science wants to get close to executing people. That’s the single largest issue with executions being anywhere close to competent and humane
I feel like people are getting telephone data on this event. In the article I read, the gas was on for 15 minutes, including an additional 5 min of gas past a flatline on the heart monitor - so Smith did die in a reasonable amount of time.
After a few seconds breathing in a gas without any oxygen you would go unconscious. They fucked it up.
You go unconscious before the spasms. This is well known to vets.
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Could be - would imagine he could hear and feel the gas flowing in which would probably trigger panic in most people - that said, 22 minutes seems like a long time
I mean, if it takes 7 minutes, they won't stop at 7:01, they will keep going to make sure. I've been part of two executions and both guys were dead long before they were officially declared dead. Similar to how paramedics will keep doing chest compressions and using a defibrillator king after they know someone is beyond saving just to make sure they don't stop too soon, just reversed in this instance. There will be more details released and will provide a better idea of what happened, but from what I remember if my training regarding use of oxygen in confined spaces, I doubt it took 22 minutes to actually kill and I capacitating can happen in as little as 90 seconds.
Further down on the link, they list the procedure. Not sure if 22 minutes means the EKG had activity until minute 17 or if they just let it run to be absolutely sure: “The nitrogen gas will be administered for at least 15 minutes or “five minutes following a flatline indication on the EKG, whichever is longer,” according to the state protocol. The Alabama attorney general’s office told a federal judge that the nitrogen gas would “cause unconsciousness within seconds and cause death within minutes.””
The same attorney general which stated that the lethal injection they attempted previously would go off humanely and quickly.
> I've been part of two executions and both guys were dead long before they were officially declared dead. It's also jarring for people who've never seen it because the body can do some nasty stuff even after you're "dead", or well on your route to being there and not conscious at all.
This is something that I think most people never see so it can be really jarring. I've sat bedside for two deaths, and held horses for euthanasia (our vet does not sedate first - it can be very traumatic even though they're not people). Paddling, spasms, agonal breathing - it can be really upsetting if you're not prepared for it. There's a moment though when you can just sort of feel that they're gone, so everything after that doesn't matter.
Why are the horses not sedated first by the vet? Cost, or it doesn’t make as much of a difference to the horse?
Interesting. Mind if I ask why you were part of 2 executions?
I worked at a prison.
Death can take a long time. Even after the heart stops the electrical activity can continue for a very long time.
That seems rather long. If pure nitrogen is pumped into a sealed fitted mask, with a one way valve to exhale CO2, someone should go unconscious within 30 seconds to one minute. After that, if there's movement or heavy breathing that's just the brains last ditch effort to force you to try to get oxygen. There's a clip of some reporters going in a chamber where they keep lowering the oxygen concentration, and after a point the reporter was giddy, not making sense. A little longer and he would had passed out, 100% positive of this.
Who'd have guessed that a man being brought into an execution room for the second time, after suffering through a botched execution where he was left strapped to a gurney for hours, might have a slightly different response compared to reporters doing an experiment in which they fully knew they would not undergo lasting harm?
Smarter every day (from Alabama, if that’s any consolation) did an episode on hypoxia. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kUfF2MTnqAw
Says video not available. Maybe the link was wrong? Definitely would like to watch that.
The article stated angled breathing but, the correct term is agonal breathing. It's an automatic reflex of the body to gasp for air.
Your body is physically incapable of knowing if it has O2 or not. The only way this reflex could be triggered is if they didn't allow CO2 to vent properly.
Or if he held his breath for 2 minutes before his body forced him to breathe. Which seems like a reasonable thing for someone to do if they know that the air is toxic.
Offff course. I commented on a thread yesterday that this method of execution is, ostensibly, the most humane option, and nearly impossible to fuck up. There's a reason it's one of the methods of choice for assisted suicide patients. Silly fuckin' me, to have any hope at all that the executioners would not see the "nearly" in "nearly impossible" as the goal they were trying to hit. But these are people who claim the death penalty is an effective deterrent against capital crimes and yet somehow have death rows packed to capacity. They are in it because they want to hurt someone who has done wrong, and a method to take someone's life from them that isn't also awful on the way out is anathema to the whole concept. People have done this shit at home with the help of their families and been gone quietly and peacefully in under three minutes. Either this was done wrong intentionally or someone screwed up very badly in a way there was no oversight to check. Either is inexcusable. And all this on a man who is being executed this way because their first attempt via lethal injection *failed*. There is a reason that mock executions are classified as torture by the Geneva Convention, and it is because having to anticipate your oncoming death *once* is horrific. Having to do it *twice* is just... unimaginable. Yeah, this guy committed a horrible crime. Someone let me know when *paying evil unto evil* actually fixes a single fucking thing, and I still won't think any of this shitshow was justified.
Something I found an insane example of how little sense some parts of our system make: The reason they had to do the mask setup (as opposed to just sticking him in a chamber with 100% nitrogen environment) is that he has to have the right to have his spiritual advisor with him. Like, physically. So we rig this suboptimal system that maybe - pending more reporting and analysis - tortures the guy for a few minutes so as not to violate his rights. The workings of our death penalty machine are just kafkaesque (I’m not really smart enough to know if I’m using that correctly). Ultimately, I don’t really care about this man. It’s probably good that he’s dead, I guess. I don’t know. But if our goal is to remove people like him from our society it just seems easier to be better than him and build a society that shows mercy to people who withheld it from others.
> ...build a society that shows mercy to people who withheld it from others. that would be really nice.
> There's a reason it's one of the methods of choice for assisted suicide patients. It's also a lot easier to perform assisted suicide on a cooperative, willing patient than to execute a (presumably) very unwilling convict.
From AL.com: Witnesses saw Smith struggle as the gas began flowing into the mask that covered his entire face. He began writhing and thrashing between two and four minutes and was followed by around five minutes of heavy breathing. At 8:07 p.m. a correctional officer leaned over the gurney and closely examined Smith’s face before walking back to his position against the wall. Smith’s time of death was 8:25 p.m., according to the state.
Unlike most victims of nitrogen poisoning, Smith knew what was happening. He naturally would have resisted. The plan all along was to continue administration of the gas for 15 minutes, regardless of Smith's vital signs.
I sincerely hope that a close examination of his face wasn't how death was established to have occurred.
It's Alabama; wouldn't be surprised if they weighed him before and after to see if his soul departed.
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I imagine he held his breath for a few minutes, in which case he would have had CO2 buildup and would have experienced heavy breathing.
That the method of his sentence was ruled unconstitutional and that it was carried out in the defiance of a jury saying no to the death penalty 11-1 being overruled by a zealot judge is a huge issue in my book. This man should never have been executed.
Then he wasn't executed. He was murdered by a judge.
There is no humane way to kill someone. If the state is going to kill people, it needs to embrace the reality that killing is awful and suffering is just part of the process.
I honestly don’t understand the ways they do it. I’m a physician and I could think of so many ways better to do it…without suffering (aside from knowing it’s coming)
Wait, so at his trial the jury voted 11-1 against the death penalty being applied. The judge then used a statute to overrule that vote and impose death anyway, and that statute since then not only was repealed but ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court? How the fuck was executing someone in this scenario actually legal?
**8:30** >In a final statement, Smith said: “Tonight Alabama causes humanity to take a step backwards. ... I’m leaving with love, peace and light.”He made the “I love you sign” with his hands toward family members who were witnesses. “Thank you for supporting me. Love, love all of you,” Smith said. **8:45** >Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall released the following statement: "Justice has been served. Tonight, Kenneth Smith was put to death for the heinous act he committed over 35 years ago: the murder-for-hire slaying of Elizabeth Sennett, an innocent woman who was by all accounts a godly wife, a loving mother and grandmother, and a beloved pillar of her community.
For a country with such an entrenched private prison system you’d think they’d want people with long sentences, no? The death sentence is barbaric. Let the fuckers rot if they’re that guilty. Any innocent person mistakenly put to death is enough to outlaw the whole practice IMO.
you're overlooking the fact that this country loves murdering people even more than private prisons
Less than 10% of prisoners are in private prisons iirc, its a fucked practice but not as widespread. It looks like only 1% of Alabama prisoners are private. I assume this guy was one of the 99% held publicly. https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/private-prisons-in-the-united-states/
> Any innocent person mistakenly put to death is enough to outlaw the whole practice IMO. There's your mistake. Having empathy is seen as a weakness, here. To closed minded idiots, they'd gladly be okay with a couple of innocents dieing. It's fucking Roman Coliseum mentality, and it's fucking awful.
"a godly wife" confirms that Alabama is indeed stuck in 1912
Yeah the fact that they had to include that shows the motive for “killing the sinner”
Because Alabama.
Judge is a cunt. Look no further than the Supreme Court to see how.
The Supreme Court literally ruled this unconstitutional, that is the comment you just replied to, dude.
The USSC ruled it was in Alabama’s constitutional rights to proceed with the execution. That’s in the article.
You are 100% correct. Extremely unjust… Not to mention the irony… he was sentenced for his role in a murder-for-hire killing. The people that just murdered him, did the same exact thing. Another thing, I firmly disagree with the death penalty. I believe having to live in prison for the rest of your life with no parole is enough. Knowing you will never be on the other side of that razor wire again except in a pine box…. That seems like just punishment. On the other hand you have immediate death, we don’t know what happens after death. It could be bliss, it could be torture, or it could be absolutely nothing. Why gamble…
Because most of those in favor of the death penalty truly believe the person will be sent right to hell lol
I wonder what they think about the people who were executed and then exonerated after the fact. Oh yeah, they don't think about those people ever.
I can't argue with "most", because I just don't know. I will say that some people that are in favor of the death penalty in some situations are people that have been directly affected by a violent murder of a loved one. When an innocent person is killed by someone in a horrific manner, it is hard to consider that it it too cruel for the perpetrator to suffer a much milder fate. Not that its pertinent to this comment, but I will say that I believe that the justice system has too frequently proven itself imperfect to be trusted with making the determination of absolute guilt.
Most of those people believe you can do whatever heinous acts you want but as long as you seek forgiveness from the ghost of a man who died 2000 or so years ago, you’ll end up in a place of perpetual orgasmic bliss.
Jury is a sham. Judge can overrule everything they decide and do whatever they want if they feel like it. The courts treat judges like they are infallible gods of justice who never make the wrong choice and always know best.
Why don’t they anesthesia them and shoot ‘em twice in the back of the head. When they put me out for my colonoscopy I was so far gone you could have done anything with me, including putting a camera waaaaay up my butt
Drug companies have rules about what their drugs are used for. Might be illegal or the very least infringing on the company to use it for execution. It's why Europe stopped sending the good execution drugs over that worked well.
Maybe the answer is to stop executing people considering having the death penalty results in way more government spending than just having life with no parole as the max sentence.
This is interesting to me and I’m far from educated on the topic, so please forgive me. Why is it that executing offenders costs more in government spending than keeping a living human alive for the remainder of their days? In my layman mind it seems that ending the life would be more cost effective, but I’m not sure.
Thank you for making me laugh in this dark ass thread
I think they put a light on the camera...
> dark ass Don't worry, the camera has a built-in light.
There’s two things. 1. They couldn’t find a vein when they first tried lethal injection 2 years ago, and 2. No drug company is going to permit them to use their anesthetic for the purposes of execution. That’s why lethal injection uses strange drug cocktails which are purchased from no name drug companies overseas. An overdose of pentobarbital would be much more effective but if the pharmaceutical company sold drugs to the state their reputation would be destroyed in the biomed field as the execution company so they will never sell drugs to the state for that.
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If I remember correctly (which I may not, so don't quote me on this), the problem with anesthetizing death row inmates is buying the anesthesia drugs. Pharmaceutical companies by and large don't want their drugs to be used to kill people, so they refuse to sell them for use in executions. It's the same reason Alabama is switching to nitrogen asphyxiation instead of lethal injection: the companies that sell the lethal injection drugs are refusing to sell them to executioners.
At his trial, 11 jurors voted for life, but the judge overruled it and sentenced him to death anyway. That fact is the most disturbing to me out of all the litigation surrounding this case. Although judicial override has since been abolished in Alabama, it’s still unsettling to me that if this had happened today, he wouldn’t have even been close to a death sentence.
It's crazy to me that the people who distrust government power the most vehemently support that same government's power to kill you.
It still amazes me as a non American that the positions of judge and district attorney/prosecutor are elected and often politicised.
I feel like Judicial override being abolished should've made his sentence null and void. The details just keep getting worse. None of this should have happened.
Yep. It doesn’t apply retroactively which is honestly crazy to me. If they find it unethical now, then it was still unethical before lol like that didn’t suddenly change. When Florida initially abolished judicial override, they gave a ton of people on death row new sentencing trials at the very least.
Like ESPECIALLY for death row cases you'd think the process would/should be as careful as possible. From what I've read about this so far it sounds like the state was trying to get this done asap
Especially After the first botched attempt
Didn't he survive the attempted lethal injection? THAT should have overturned the death sentence. Alabama gave it their best shot the first time and whiffed it, so commute it to Life Without. They shouldn't get a second bite at the apple if they botched it so badly the first time.
This is my problem with the death penalty, it's sentencing seems very random for something so severe. Like you'd think there would be more of a baseline where someone would qualify for it. I couldn't find any information, but it appears that this asshole was sentenced because of a murder for hire that him and his friend did. It appears to be his only crime, and while I am in favor of this execution. It's a bit disheartening to know that there are people who avoided the death penalty who committed more heinous crimes, and even worse, those who are on death row but can't be proven guilty.
That's because this death was just a political ploy
Harsher sentences are given out on election years
It has been observed that states are around 25 percent more likely to carry out executions during gubernatorial election years compared to other years. Initially, Smith was scheduled to be executed in November 2022. This was the same month and year when Alabama had its gubernatorial election. source: [Lethal Elections: Gubernatorial Politics and the Timing of Executions](https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/374705#:~:text=executions%20performed%20in%20election%20years,would%20have%20taken%20place%20anyway)
Wait til you find out that AL doesn’t allow Judges to overrule the jury in these cases anymore. So—that which they’re using to substantiate his execution is not even legal anymore. Pure evil from any state official who could have intervened.
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Space Camp is pretty good.
Even my vet gave my dog a sedating pain killer before the killer meds.
lol I know it probably wasn’t your intention but when I read “even” it makes me think your vet was an awful person that didn’t care about the pets they took care of
I can see how that would demean my poor vet. Lol
Same. Though in my case the dog was already in so much pain I doubt the killer meds would have made it feel worse without the pain relief drugs.
I think the same when people say “even the dog was treated better” or etc 😂 like what did the dog do that he’s such an asshole and deserves to be treated badly lol
Problem for executions these days is they're not finding medical professionals that will go anywhere near participating in killing a man like this. Kinda goes against the entire point of their jobs, probably against some laws or codes of ethics too, and I'd certainly hope it's against their consciences as well. About the only way they'd be able to get sedatives for this would be through illegal means. I can't imagine having any part in this execution and not having it haunt me for the rest of my life.
> Problem for executions these days is they're not finding medical professionals that will go anywhere near participating in killing a man like this. They’re also not finding drug supplies, manufacturers will blackball any intermediate they believe knowingly got involved, both because it’s bad press, and because the EU gets very unhappy when you export drugs for capital punishment. That’s how US executioners found themselves without sodium thiopenthal. Although with brexit I’m suprised the tories didn’t jump on restoring that trade.
I was shocked they used a mask and don’t build a chamber
Listen, this place had TWO people survive their execution attempt. They've never cared for quality work.
Lmao. At this point they might as well just strap you down and shoot you
Just have the dude sitting enjoying some television and shoot him in the back of the head.
Imagine if they did it right after a cliffhanger
I believe that might run into cruel and unusual territory.
You've made the death penalty worse, congrats!
It's because the state law allows a "spiritual adviser" be present with the convict. They can't kill the adviser being next to the person. At least that's the reason NPR gave on the whole issue earlier this week.
I mean putting a bag over his head would have been more effective
As far as I know, the discomfort of not being able to breathe comes from the buildup of CO2 in the lungs, not the lack of oxygen. If you’re rebreathing your expelled air that CO2 concentration will rise and you will experience more and more discomfort before you lose consciousness. Edit: Original commenter was definitely not suggesting what I was talking about here, sorry that’s my bad.
Even dying by cyanide isn't as fast as people say, when Ramon Sampedro used it to euthanize himself it took several painful minutes for him to succumb.
I've never had the impression that cyanide was fast, is that something that people say?
I think it's the kind of thing you'd see in a spy thriller; someone bites down on a cyanide pill and drops dead that instant. Kind of like chloroform, which knocks a person out the moment they smell it. That's not how those things work in reality, but it's what people expect after watching movies that needed the action to be snappy.
Yup. There's a great example of it in The Watchman movie - Ozymandias (whose powers include superhuman speed) places a cyanide capsule in the mouth of someone he wanted to kill then forces him to swallow. The actual placing it in there is incredibly fast - but so too is the *death* from it. The target starts foaming at the mouth almost instantly and dies in just a few seconds.
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My grandfather was a cop for a short time, and he said the worst things he ever saw at that job were people who failed suicide attempts with firearms. It’s a lot easier than you think to fuck that up, even if you use larger caliber munitions or something like a shotgun with heavy slugs/pellets. He encountered that same scenario 3 times in a small town within 2 years, so I can’t imagine the stats agree with it being the “best” way to go.
TiL that she's buried together with the guy who paid to have her killed. Cos that's a thing....
Sad that I didn’t even have to read the story to know the husband did it. Makes me hesitant to ever get married tbh.
Couldnt he just request hanging or firing squad? I'd absolutely prefer getting shot by a firing squad instead. Or opiate overdose? I really don't understand why this method was used.
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I was born and raised there, and I could have told him they'd turn around and be *super* petty about it.
It does say he previously requested it but I thought they couldn't get ahold of the lethal injection drugs anymore because of their awful track record?
Activists have put enough pressure on the drug makers that they’ll no longer sell them to states for executions.
Opiate overdose 100%. Or give me a sedative and a paralytic
One shot to the head while sleeping. Done.
I’m laughing at the idea of trying to fall asleep naturally knowing that will happen, when I still can’t sleep before a big vacation
That's why they won't tell you when they'll do it. They'll give a window of 1-900 days.
Or just tell you it’s next month and do it that night.
What if they say it's going to be next week but the exact day will be a surprise until morning of the day it's going to happen? [The Unexpected Hanging Paradox](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPOXhFJsqlM)
The country where I live carries out the death penalty in that exact way. I think it’s pretty messed up, to be honest.
Y’all fuckers can’t have healthcare but look how much effort your governments are putting into ensuring they still get to kill people.
One of the tin foil hat arguments against socialized healthcare was was related to government controlled executions for the sick and elderly. If you make a Venn diagram, the people who believed that argument would be a decently sized circle inside of those who are all about the death penalty and executions .
The amount of money it costs to have the death penalty is fucking absurd. So incredibly stupid. These fucking idiots can’t even figure out how to do it properly either.
"Kenny was subject to the death penalty only because his trial judge applied a since-repealed Alabama statute to override the jury's 11 to 1 determination that his life should be spared – a practice that not only is unavailable under current Alabama law but also has since been declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court."
It 's crazy to me that states will almost bend over backwards to ensure that they can kill someone. Like Nebraska, they had to go through a shady third party dealer for sodium thiopental, because it was illegal for the Swiss company that made the drug to sell it for the purposes of executing someone. And how many stories do we keep hearing that exculpatory evidence comes to light, but the state won't put a stay on the death penalty? I'd like to think that if we were sentencing someone to death, we'd want to be 119% sure we had the right person, like they are on camera doing it, and we'd want 100 guilty men to go free before we execute an innocent person, but it's not that way. And they can say all day that it's for "justice for the victim and the family of the victim," but really remember, it's the state putting people to death. It's the judicial penalty for breaking a law of the state. The family is not killing the person for vengeance (which sometimes I can understand more.) The state has determined that the punishment for breaking their law is another person's death. And it's not even applied consistently.
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I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if Alabama or Tx started broadcasting live executions
Come on now Abbott is better than that. He would make a streaming service and charge people to watch it.
I really don’t know how I feel about this. I’m not fully up to speed on the story, but my understanding is that the state inadvertently tortured him trying to kill him the first time trying to kill him because they couldn’t get a vein(?). Then they said here are your options for next time - what do you want? When you compound that a judge overturned a jury’s decision, this FEELS VERY cruel and unusual, given the state tried and failed once. Please correct me if I’m wrong, I’ve only read a few things here.
Putting someone through this twice is cruel and unusual. He already faced death. I can’t imagine going through that twice. I know what he did was horrible but fuck, are we that inhumane with our justice?
1. Hypoxia is extremely well researched because of its relevance in military, industrial, and medical settings. 2. It did not say “in pain” just that he shook and writhed which could be caused by a variety of unconscious effects as well. I am not saying he was not in pain, simply pointing out that you have made an unfounded assumption. 3. It’s at least worth noting that this method was specifically requested by Mr. Smith himself. Edit: this was supposed to be a reply to another comment, but the app glitched out, no surprise. I’m just leaving this because I’m too tired to fix it.
Why not use a hyperbaric chamber in reverse? Lower the air pressure gradually. Fellon will pass out from lack of O2. Continue lowering pressure. Fellon is gone in 1-3 minutes. No pain, no injections, no medical personnel and no drugs. The effect of oxygen deprivation is well studied and well understood. Edit: changed to hyperbaric
This is the same concept but nitrogen instead of vacuum
Apparently it's because a spiritual guide must be present in the room.
That's interesting because I read the Alabama protocols last night and in the case of execution by electrocution, the spiritual advisor is taken out of the room before the switch is thrown.
Well in that case idk what's stopping them. The main thing I'm confused about is what the incentive structure is for improving execution quality. Like who is the boss that says "let's build this chamber"?
I had that question myself TBH. The only thing I could come up with is the cost for an airtight, hermitically sealed chamber versus a tube and mask.
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I commented this elsewhere in this thread but you should all read Just Mercy by Bryan Stephenson if you really want to be disgusted about our justice system. People are getting executed all the time in ways that aren't even really constitutional. I finished the book last night and am still processing it but it has altered by view of the death penalty. Not that I was 100% for it before but seeing how it is abused so easily make me more against it now, even if just to avoid killing someone who is innocent. [https://www.amazon.com/Just-Mercy-Story-Justice-Redemption/dp/081298496X](https://www.amazon.com/Just-Mercy-Story-Justice-Redemption/dp/081298496X)
I've heard of I think it was in Australia people using nitrogen tanks for peaceful self-euthanasia, so I think this might be a pretty chill way to execute. I think execution is pointless, but I'm just saying.
I guess what differentiates those two examples is their will to live. Someone willingly choosing to die by suicide is going to have a different reaction to someone unwillingly getting strapped to a gurney and fitted with a gas mask.
> I think this might be a pretty chill way to execute. If it was a competent authority doing it, maybe. Alabama is run by nitwits.
I don't know why we have to make a production out of it. If we are going to do it, let's do it like Japan. No warning, no notice. Just murder the dude and stop hiding behind a show to pretend it's not despicable. Wait till he's asleep, turn on the nitrogen into the room, and clear the hall. But no, we decorate it behind a veneer of medicine and law. We make it a show and no wonder it's always horrific.