Kenneth Smith ‘struggled for life’ for 22 minutes in Alabama nitrogen gas execution: Updates
Kenneth Smith ‘struggled for life’ for 22 minutes in Alabama nitrogen gas execution: Updates
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.”
Pretty compassionate way to kill a person.
Once again, the Law in the south is brutal.
I personally experienced breathing nitrogen until loss of consciousness under controlled and supervised conditions for training purposes with the RCAF. I was in a room with seven other people who were all doing the same thing as well as instructors who were in here with us for safety.
The point of the exercise was to sit in a room with a mask on, recognize the symptoms of hypoxia when we experienced them and throw a lever that would resume normal air breathing once we had enough. We were given tablets with simple games to play to simulate having our minds occupied on accomplishing some tasks. We knew they were going to switch or air supplies with pure nitrogen at some point to cause hypoxia but we didn't know when it was going to happen. The room was also a hypobaric chamber but it didn't stimulate a high enough altitude to induce hypoxia by itself, it was only there to simulate the environmental signs of decompression ( fogging of the air, percieved drop in pressure, cooling sensation, etc)
We sat there for a few minutes accomplishing the tasks on the tablets (basically paying candy crush) with nothing special going on. Then I noticed that we all started breathing deeper and harder. When I looked around people were also red in the face but strangely did not feel any discomfort from it and some people were even still playing on their tablets without noticing. Some of them threw their personal lever immediately because the point of the exercise was to recognize the signs of hypoxia. But others including my competitive ass wanted to see how far I could take it and if I could outlast others so we kept going.
My breathing naturally got deeper and harder but strangely I wasn't feeling like I was suffocating. I started feeling pins and needles in my extremities. Concentrating on the tasks in the tablet became increasingly difficult and slower. A few moments later I got tunnel vision and my hearing started to sound muffled. These two effects progressively got worse until I could almost not see or hear anything anymore at which point I finally threw the lever just before passing out due to a phenomenon called oxygen paradox where when oxygen supply is resumed the hypoxia symptoms briefly get worse before going away. I didn't even notice passing out. I woke up a few moments later and from my perspective it seemed that time had skipped forward a minute. Had I not thrown the lever and there were no instructors to do it for me I would have died a few moments later.
All of this took less than 5 minutes and I never experienced anything worse than mild discomfort throughout. I don't know how they managed to make it last 25 minutes other than maybe the brain stem running on fumes and keeping the heart beating but there is no consciousness at that point. If I ever had to pick a way to be executed this would be it, provided that it is done correctly.
Every day you wake up and think, "There's no way America can get even more fucked up than it was yesterday".
And every day some asshole says "wanna bet...watch this."
Look. Execution is inhumane. You can't make it gentle, peaceful, or nice. All you can do is make it quick, which it sounds like they failed to do here. But if the good people of Alabama aren't comfortable with someone struggling for half an hour and then dying, they shouldn't execute people at all.
That said, the person quoted in this article is the executed's spiritual advisor. If I was Smith's spiritual advisor, I'd also be claiming the method was inhumane, violent, and awful. The reality is that it's a lot more cruel that Smith went back into the execution chamber despite them botching the job the first time than that they half-assed the nitrogen asphyxiation. It was an untested method, but every method of execution has a first person to be executed with it.
If your society is bickering over which way it should kill the condemned, you've already ceded the moral high ground. We have already solved execution, and we've had it solved for decades, even centuries arguably. Hanging, firing squad, electrocution, beheading, lethal injection--every method has its proponents and detractors, but every method is to the same end. If you're too squeamish for what happened in Alabama, an alternative method of killing people isn't going to fix that for you. The solution is staring you right in the face, and it's life without parole.
The state tells you murder is illegal. Except when the state does it. You can't expect people to follow, "do what I say, not what I do."
It's cruel, it's a reflection of our morals. The death penalty is not a deterrent for murder. The death penalty is hypocrisy. The death penalty is for an unserious society.
But the death penalty is just a symptom of a greater chronic illness we suffer from. We'll just continue to kill ourselves until we find a cure for the disease.
Edit: I see many do not like my wording for state sanctioned murder. If you are reading this and don't understand, imagine if listening to George Bush (can't remember which) tell the tv America doesn't negotiate with terrorists. He's drawing a moral line in the sand with terrorism. That's my point. We need to figure out where our moral line in the sand is with the death penalty, because right now it's all over the place. Do I think outlawing the death penalty will solve our societal woes? No, I do not. The people will demand it until it is reinstated. For me I ask what is the purpose of the death penalty? Does it serve a greater good for a society? Obviously it does not. Americans are murdered all the time, so it serves no purpose.
Gruesome.
I'm not convinced the death penalty is worthwhile except to feed someone's wrath.
What if, (and hear me out,) we did for corrections the sort of thing that countries with low recidivism do? Like, not use for-profit prisons with incentive to turn out re-offenders, and not use prisons that turn out hardened criminals that aren't equipped to function in the world without resorting to crime, and actually take the 'corrections' or 'rehabilitation' parts of their nomenclature seriously?
If all we do with our prisons is punish and humiliate (and squeeze slave labor out of) convicts, we're just creating future crime and all that's left at that point is killing convicts at industrial pace unless you can figure out that crime is more driven by poverty than anything else, and the USA just doesn't want to figure that out because it just doesn't want to solve poverty or crime, it wants to make money creating and punishing both.
From another report:
“It appeared that Smith was holding his breath as long as he could,” Hamm ( Alabama’s corrections commissioner) said at the press conference.
Well, that would certainly make things worse for the prisoner and the witnesses.
If that's the case, then he wasn't going to be unconscious in seconds, as it would be expected by breathing the gas.
Instead, he inadvertently caused himself a lot of unnecessary suffering.
personally i think we should start doing a slightly modified version of the traditional british canon execution.
For those who aren't familar, you strap a dude to the front of a canon, with a dud charge (i don't believe there is a projectile) and then set it off and run. Apparently it's pretty "spectacular" I say we do the same thing but delete the head in the process. Or perhaps add a canon ball because why not.
If we're executing people theres no need to pretend what we're doing is "good"
As someone who gets nitrogen at the dentist office with a mask I have a theory that it was just him consciously fighting it. It’s positive pressure nitrogen that you just breath in at normal breath rate. If you breath really hard you can displace the nitrogen and suck in some regular air. It sounds like he fought it which caused it to take longer. It is the standard human reaction to fight against one’s own death and I’m guessing he thought that if they held out long enough they would stop. If they are going to use a mask like that as opposed to a hood or chamber they really should sedate the person first.
Look I can't help but feel deceived.
Every single time the death penalty was brought up, nitrogen asphyxiation was touted as a humane alternative. There were always claims that it would be painless, and that the process itself was extremely well understood. It was usually further implied that the reason states don't do this was because death penalty advocates wanted the prisoner to suffer as long as possible.
Yet the second nitrogen asphyxiation became a viable option, the very same people touting it lined up against it. Suddenly it was completely unproven. Suddenly it was wholly inhumane and inflicted suffering.
It's so incredibly obvious that the push for nitrogen asphyxiation was at least in part a bad faith argument by people who are philosophically opposed to the death penalty.
Being philosophically opposed to the death penalty is a valid opinion, but the dishonesty makes me much less inclined for me to take these people seriously.
I don't think I'm unique in that regard. Nobody likes being deceived or lied to.
From a purely academic/scientific perspective, is there a reason why they do not administer some form of benzodiazepine to gently sedate the prisoner before conducting the execution protocol? I'm not a medical professional, but I do have prescription benzo and it works miraculously in calming me down and lets me drift off to an incredibly deep sleep.
Come on, isn't this america? Why don't they just shoot prisoners?! It's quick, cheap and they love shooting, don't they? Coming up with so many twisted ways to kill a person just to do it differently than the Nazis. If even Belarus is still officially shooting their people, why isn"t the greatest country in the world?
/s because I can't handle thisIDK about you guys, but in raising our kids we believed it was important that they know where meat comes from. So when slaughtering poultry the kids help out. Maybe apply the same thing here?
If you support capital punishment, then you must sign up for firing squad duty. If less than 50% of voters sign up for firing squad duty, then the death penalty is abolished.
Talk is cheap, conscience is expensive!
Every day I wake up and say: "what the fuck, America?!"
Good that there is extensive evidence on the effectiveness of (brutal) death sentences as means to reduce crime!
Oh wait...
State sactioned torture and murder. This was no execution, this was torturing someone to death.
Forget death row inmates, I volunteer as tribute
Wouldn't a firing squad machine be so much faster and more effective? Have 3 people push buttons only one button works. It's all a horrible mess, regardless of the method.
Sorry. I can't emphasize with criminals. It's impossible for me. The only thing that is weird to me is why on earth you took almost 40 years to execute a prisoner? It doesn't make sense. And other thing. I hope all the 4 criminals get the same punishment as well. It looks like the idiot paid the most.
"Pastor Charles Sennett Sr. hired Billy Gray Williams, one of his tenants, to murder his wife, 45-year-old Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett.[6] To carry out the plan, Williams hired Kenneth Smith and John Forrest Parker to assist him.[6] Sennett was going to pay each of the men $1,000 for the murder.[6] On March 18, 1988, Elizabeth Sennett was found with fatal injuries in her home in Colbert County, Alabama.[6]"
Oh and other thing for all the softy snowflakes. Let's hope your mom, sister, granny, father, brother, never get killed. It's way too easy to talk from your comfortable positions.