Witness Reverend Jeff Hood told reporters he saw a man ‘struggling for their life’ for 22 minutes as Smith became the first US death row inmate executed by nitrogen asphyxia
“Kenny just began to gasp for air repeatedly and the execution took about 25 minutes total.”
I once saw a slogan on a button at a street vendor in Washington D.C. "Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?" It's stuck with me after two decades.
I'm against the death penalty but that's a terrible argument against it. It's not hypocritical to jail someone who was falsely imprisoning their victim. The state has a monopoly on violence, which means a monopoly on punishing wrongdoers, controlled by the will of the people.
The state is allowed to do all sorts of things individual people can't. It has a different role. It taxes, it enforces justice, it regulates business, it provides services that the private sector won't.