Kenneth Eugene Smith’s execution would be the nation’s first using nitrogen gas.
Kenneth Eugene Smith’s execution would be the nation’s first using nitrogen gas.
Lawyers for a spiritual adviser to an Alabama inmate scheduled to be executed with nitrogen gas next month said in a complaint filed Wednesday that restrictions on how close the adviser can get to the inmate in the death chamber are “hostile to religion.”
The Rev. Jeff Hood, who plans to enter the death chamber to minister to Kenneth Eugene Smith, said the Alabama Department of Corrections asked him to sign a form acknowledging the risks and agreeing to stay 3 feet (0.9 meters) away from Smith’s gas mask. Hood, a death penalty opponent, said that shows there is a risk to witnesses attending the execution. He said the restrictions would also interfere with his ability to minister to Smith before he is put to death.
“They’ve asked me to sign a waiver, which to me speaks to the fact that they’re already concerned that things could go wrong,” Hood said in a telephone interview.
Smith’s execution would be the nation’s first using nitrogen gas. The nitrogen is planned be administered through the gas mask placed over Smith’s nose and mouth while he is strapped to a gurney in the death chamber normally used for lethal injections.
Or they're worried he will accidentally dislodge the mask and interfere with the proper administration of nitrogen. There is no actual danger to breathing nitrogen - the air we breathe is mostly nitrogen - we just need oxygen mixed in. It's all a stage play for delaying his execution.
I'm not in favor of execution, but this is the most humane method we have available. So until we can stop executing people, it would be good not to fuck with doing it in this way.
Put the preist in SCBA gear (thing firefighters). Might as well turn this primitive practice (capital executions and preists) and go full on distopian clown show.
Humane, in these types of circumstances, are not just for the victim, but for the witnesses and executioners as well.
The internet legend that created the suicide helmet is likely the way I’d want to go given the choice. But it would not be a pleasant thing to witness.
FTR: I’m fully against the death penalty. It is a barbaric practise. But I still feel that those who participate in this horrible exercise shouldn’t be traumatized either.
All the advances in execution methods haven't been made to make it more humane to the victim - they've been made so it seems more humane to everyone else.
AFAIK, statistics-wise, the execution method with the lowest quota of horrible mishaps is the guillotine. A sufficiently fast 4t weight to the head would probably be even quicker for the brain to go, although it'd also require more cleanup.
(Yes, even overdosing on narcotics has more mishaps - and there are little to no narcotics abailable for executions, because the producers don't want them to be used for that.)
All of the more reliable methods are... grisly, and civilisation doesn't want grisly. We want to press a button and the victim goes to sleep to never wake up, because that makes it easier on us.
Hood is anti death penalty. He's using whatever argument that might work. Seems to be an alright dude really, for a Baptist preacher. Was involved in BLM in Texas and wrote a book with the statement "God is queer."
I guess if we want to be respectful to religion, we should stone him and the preacher can get as close as he wants. I bet he wouldn't have a problem standing at a distance in that scenario.
I am against the death penalty, but the requirement to stay away from the mask sounds like a way to keep someone from messing with the mask and bungling the execution more than saying the method is dangerous for observers.
Nitrogen is probably the most humane option available.
Yeah. I'm fundamentally opposed to the death penalty too, but if it's going to be used anyway despite my strenuous objections then inert gas asphyxiation is probably the "best" way to go. It's painless and very very hard to screw up.
That's arguably the most humane way to do it though.
Granted, I think the death penalty is wrong in 99.9% of cases but if it needs to be done then it should be humane.
And for the 0.01% of cases I'm taking about, it should be reserved only for people who demonstrate that their continued existence would harm other people.
I lived in fear for 20 years that my grandpa would get out of prison and kill me and my family for putting him in there in the first place, and he absolutely would have too.
A death sentence would have saved my entire family decades of mental anguish.
Every 5 years we had to contest his parole hearing just to sit on edge for the next 5 years while we waited for the next one.
Mine as well. I deal with big industrial stuff which involves nitrogen lines often. Making a leak at a site would be pretty easy. Looks like an accident and my family gets a few million.
You don’t want to do opiate overdose. I once found a dude overdosing. He was already at the agonal breathing stage. It sounded like a loud short snore about 1 every 2 min. I followed the sound to the bathroom. There was brown liquid leaking out from under the door. I tried to open the door but it wouldn’t budge. So I turned the knob and put my shoulder into the door forcing it open.
There on the floor was my best friend in the world since we were six years old. His pants were around his ankles and that brown liquid was the vomit he was choking on. Unknown to me he had been there a couple of hours.
I called 911 and they came and got him. He spent a week in the hospital, but when he came out he was different. For one thing he had lost his short term memory. He’d tell you something. Then 2 mins later tell you again like you never heard it before. But also something on a fundamental level was different.
A few years later 2 days after Christmas it was his mom’s birthday. She made him stay in the basement because she was afraid he’d embarrass her in front of her guests. After the party they went down to check on him and he was dead of an overdose.
TLDR: Don’t use heroin as an end of life plan. The margin of error is too large and if you fuck it up you’ll be tarded for the rest of your life.
Because the state had much more leeway to trample on people's rights at that time. My gut tells me you didn't read the article. I didn't either, but I just listened to a podcast about this case yesterday.