Alabama, unless stopped by the courts, intends to strap Kenneth Eugene Smith to a gurney Thursday and use a gas mask to replace breathable air with nitrogen, depriving him of oxygen, in the nation’s first execution attempt with the method.
The Alabama attorney general’s office told federal appeals court judges last week that nitrogen hypoxia is “the most painless and humane method of execution known to man.” But what exactly Smith, 58, will feel after the warden switches on the gas is unknown, some doctors and critics say.
“What effect the condemned person will feel from the nitrogen gas itself, no one knows,” Dr. Jeffrey Keller, president of the American College of Correctional Physicians, wrote in an email. “This has never been done before. It is an experimental procedure.”
Keller, who was not involved in developing the Alabama protocol, said the plan is to “eliminate all of the oxygen from the air” that Smith is breathing by replacing it with nitrogen.
We do, in fact, know what a person feels from nitrogen suffocation, and we know because nitrogen suffocation happens accidentally with some degree of regularity from workers that don’t follow proper safety protocols.
At first you feel out of breath, but you don’t feel panic from it; it’s like exhaling everything in your lungs, and then breathing in solely from a helium filled balloon (which I’m guessing most people have tried). You feel slightly high and light headed because the oxygen in your bloodstream is rapidly depleted; you are hypoxic. As you take a second and third breath, your vision tunnels, and you pass out. Your body has a mechanism to detect a dangerous buildup of carbon dioxide in your blood, but since you’re expelling the CO2 with every breath out, and breathing nitrogen back in, that panic response doesn’t get tripped.
Nitrogen suffocation has been a preferred choice for right-to-die advocates.
We can argue about how the death penalty is applied, and whether it should exist at all (I believe it should, but is almost always inappropriate), but there’s no serious argument about whether nitrogen suffocation is a good or bad way to die. The people continuously fighting against this execution are fighting the method because they’ve lost all their other avenues to prevent the execution; attempting to call this process ‘untested’–when it’s been tested by a large number of people using it to end their own lives, and tested via industrial accidents–is the only option that they have left to prevent this execution.
Thank you, I’ve been wondering why we’re suddenly seeing all this hub bub around nitrogen execution when it’s 100% obviously a better method than the barbaric injected cocktail that regularly fails. Thought I was taking crazy pills.
Lethal injection performs as it was designed to: it’s agony. You’re paralyzed, then given a heart attack.
Done correctly, lethal injection is quite humane. We do it with pets; you administer a strong sedative, and then you use an overdose of a barbiturate to stop the heart (which is not the same as a heart attack). But that’s **not **how lethal injections are typically done in the US, esp. since pharmaceutical companies don’t want to sell their medications to prisons to be used to execute prisoners; that was because anti-death penalty advocates found ways to put pressure on drug companies. But how do you stop the sale of nitrogen to a prison? I can literally go buy a tank from any welding supply company.
Edit: the sedative is used to prevent feelings of fear or panic when the heart stops.
Wrong.
The method used in human execution uses Potassium Chloride to stop the heart, not Pentobarbital. It literally causes a heart attack.
You don’t know what you’re talking about, and a quick search what have shown you that.
“If the person being executed were not already completely unconscious, the injection of a highly concentrated solution of potassium chloride could cause severe pain at the site of the IV line, as well as along the punctured vein; it interrupts the electrical activity of the heart muscle and causes it to stop beating, bringing about the death of the person being executed.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_injection
Based on this thread, it sounds like the new method should be getting the death row inmate crazy high on something, AND THEN you give them the nitrogen mask.
I think the point was that killing someone by injection doesn’t have to be inhumane. If we have a protocol to kill a dog gently we could do the same to a human, we just choose not to.
Agreed. But most of the people who support the death penalty are also the kind of people who enjoy hurting others. They want it to hurt.
I’m not pro death penalty, mostly because we suck at not convicting innocent people, but if we’re going to execute someone this is probably the best way, and have thought this is how it should be done for a while. I’m not suicidal but if I was going to do it it would be with nitrogen.
You still have to take at least 3 breaths knowing you are killing yourself as you do so, and if you so choose can make the moment more awkward by holding your breath and struggling and/or screaming.
Surely the actual best way is completely instant and unavoidable like being crushed by a giant weight that moves faster than the human reaction speed and completely obliterates the body, or having your head exploded by a cannon ball or being completely instantly atomized by a massive explosion?
Doesnt carbon-monoxide do this too?
Yes, even faster as CO will displace oxygen from your blood.
Really any inert gas will do it. Nitrogen is just the most plentiful and thus easiest and cheapest.
Well. Yes, but also no. CO poisoning will make you feel sick. That might be because it’s not enough CO.
As someone who has been a bit too close to a leaky nitrogen tank, it just felt like I had stood up too quickly. There was nothing painful about the experience, and if I had been hit with a higher dose I imagine I would have been unconscious before feeling anything.
Don’t get me wrong, capital punishment is bad, but this feels like one of the least bad ways to go.
thank you. the number of incorrect statements by people who just don’t get the physiology in this article was driving me nuts. As long as no CO2 buildup happens, you have no feeling of air starvation. That’s why certain types of re-breather accidents can get out of hand so quickly.
Many divers have also died from nitrogen narcosis and apparently it’s like being drunk / off your tits from N20 / ket.
Nitrogen narcosis is caused by the high pressure exposure to nitrogen in the air divers breathe underwater. Its different to hypoxia, which is a lack of oxygen. It can cause a euphoria and can be dangerous if the diver loses focus and makes a mistake. The effects are completely reversed by ascending and have no long term effect.
Source: I’m a scuba diving instructor
Have you ever said hello to an octopus?
Also an instructor, and I have never said hello, but I have waved 8 times as he passed.