#nitrogen hypoxia

[justia]

Death Penalty States Beware: Nitrogen Hypoxia Is Not the Solution to America’s Long History of Inhumane Executions

10 MAY 2024 | AUSTIN SARAT

On May 8, Alabama’s Republican Governor Kay Ivey set a date for the state’s second execution by nitrogen hypoxia. Her office announced that Alan Eugene Miller would be put to death sometime within thirty hours after 12:00 a.m. on Thursday, September 26, 2024.

The governor’s action followed a decision by the Alabama Supreme Court granting the state attorney general’s request for permission to set Miller’s execution date. Miller was convicted and sentenced to death in July 2000 for killing three men in a workplace shooting.

If Alabama goes forward with its plan, it will be Miller’s second trip to the execution chamber. His first trip, in September 2022, produced a gruesome spectacle.

Read More Here

[seekingtemporship]

[pilgrim1975]

The non-capital execution of James Coburn. No, not that one.

Executing Americans for crimes other than murder was once standard practice. Robbery, armed robbery, house-breaking, burglary and rape could all earn a death sentence in a number of States. Under Federal law, bank robbery was once a capital crime even without a shot being fired. The death penalty for rape, particularly in the South, was undoubtedly used along racial lines with far more…

[fromkenari]

Alabama is going to execute a man by suffocating him

The protocol in Alabama calls for an inmate to be strapped to a gurney and fitted with a mask and a breathing tube. The mask is meant to administer 100% pure nitrogen, depriving the person of oxygen until they die. State officials have argued death by nitrogen gas is a humane, painless form of execution and that the person would lose consciousness within seconds of inhaling the nitrogen and die within minutes. However, [the late Kenneth Smith]'s execution took 22 minutes from the time the curtains of the viewing room opened and closed, according to the Associated Press, during which Smith reportedly shook and writhed on the gurney, pulling against the restraints "for at least two minutes" before he began breathing heavily and ultimately passed away.

Alan Miller is scheduled to be executed by nitrogenous hypoxia tomorrow, Thursday, September 26th, 2024, in Alabama. This is will be the second time they have attempted to execute this man.

[corbenic]

Alabama carried out the execution on Thursday, January 25, 2024.

AP News reports that the execution took about 22 minutes, and that “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.”

It’s too soon to be sure exactly what happened medically, but this report doesn’t seem to align with the state of Alabama’s claims that this would “cause unconsciousness within seconds.”

today the first person in the united states will be executed using a gas mask containing 100% nitrogen gas, meaning he will suffer and die of sudden hypoxia. although the state of alabama claims to predict that the nitrogen gas will "cause unconsciousness within seconds, and cause death within minutes,” medical experts have pointed out that there are risks that a person subjected to this form of execution could suffer from seizures, choking on their own vomit, and prolonged suffering, and claim that “alabama has refused to be forthcoming with the fine details of execution by forced nitrogen gas inhalation” affecting the defendant’s ability to “adequately make a legal defence.”

the UN has warned that this plan could constitute torture. the American Veterinary Association has advised again the use of nitrogen hypoxia for euthanasia of almost all mammals. experts also warn that safety issues for those in the vicinity of the execution could block prisoners right to have a spiritual advisor in the execution chamber as established by the supreme court in 2022, as well as the right to healthcare as established by the supreme court in 1976 should they not die immediately.

Kenneth Smith, who will be the the guinea pig for this inhumane punishment, could not be sentenced with the death penalty if his case was tried today as this sentence was imposed by a judge overruling the decision of a jury, which is no longer permitted.

the use of nitrogen hypoxia to kill prisoners has been approved in alabama, mississippi, and oklahoma, and is a risk in arizona, oklahoma, and nebraska.

you can sign this petition to several of these states’ governors and legislators here. if you’re a jewish community leader wanting to join the jewish community statement opposing the gas chamber you can sign here. you can also reach out directly to your reps, especially alabama governor Kay Ivey, who has the authority to stop this execution (although time is running very short) and other executions of this type in the future.

if you’re in “canada” like me, the canadian company walter surface companies, owned by a canadian private equity firm called onex corp is complicit in this execution as one of its subsidiaries is producing the gas masks that will be used in these executions. you can sign a petition here and do anything else you can to put pressure on these groups.

i’m horrified that any country still uses the death penalty. i’m horrified at the precedent that this particular execution sets. nobody should be okay with this.

[masterofd1saster]

CJ court watch Kenneth Eugene Smith execution

SCt declined on Thurs to stay the execution in Smith v. Hamm, 601 U. S. __ (2024). J. Sotomayor was incensed and dissented. J.J. Kagan and Jackson also dissented.

The issue was whether nitrogen hypoxia is a cruel and unusual method of execution. The state's response to his petition included

When Alabama scheduled Smith to be executed in 2022, he challenged the State’s lethal injection protocol. Nitrogen hypoxia would be preferable, Smith said, because he would “lose consciousness within seconds, and experience no pain or discomfort while dying within minutes.” DE39-1:¶86.1 On August 25, 2023, the State agreed to execute Smith by nitrogen hypoxia, not lethal injection, and moved to set a new execution date**** https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-6562/298749/20240125133540947_Oppo%20to%20Stay%20and%20BIO%20FINAL.pdf

***

***The execution process began at 7:53 p.m. CT Thursday, and Smith was pronounced dead at 8:25 p.m., according to Alabama Department of Corrections officials. Nitrogen flowed for about 15 minutes during the procedure, state corrections commissioner John Hamm said in a news conference. Smith, who was on a gurney, appeared conscious for “several minutes into the execution,” and “shook and writhed” for about two minutes after that, media witnesses said in a joint report. That was followed by several minutes of deep breathing before his breath began slowing “until it was no longer perceptible for media witnesses,” the media witnesses said. When asked at the news conference about Smith shaking at the beginning of the execution, Hamm said Smith appeared to be holding his breath “for as long as he could” and may have also “struggled against his restraints.” “There was some involuntary movement and some agonal breathing, so that was all expected and is in the side effects that we’ve seen and researched on nitrogen hypoxia,” Hamm said. “So nothing was out of the ordinary of what we were expecting.” Agonal breathing is an irregular, gasping breath pattern that can happen when someone is near death.*** https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/us/alabama-execution-nitrogen-what-we-know/index.html

+++

Blanke, C. (2017). Characterizing 18 years of the Death with Dignity Act in Oregon. JAMA Oncol. 3(10) reported >950 cases of physician assisted suicide in Oregon. Blanke found

Patients rarely remained unconscious for long periods; median time to death was 25 minutes, but the range was 1 minute to more than 4 days. The medications were relatively devoid of unexpected toxic effects. Vomiting was unusual (24 patients, 2.4%). Six patients awakened, giving the medications an efficacy rate of 99.4%.

Smith's death was right in the ball park for what you'd expect for "death with dignity."

[cheerfullycatholic]

Alabama could soon begin using its newly constructed gas chamber to carry out what would be the first-ever execution using nitrogen hypoxia. Alabama's new gas chamber has never been tested and a new protocol for carrying out an execution using nitrogen hypoxia was released with extensive redactions.

...

Members of the Jewish community who indicate so when they sign on to this petition are also adding their name to the following stand-alone statement: JEWISH COMMUNITY STATEMENT OPPOSING THE GAS CHAMBER Jewish tradition presents somewhat contradictory statements regarding the death penalty. While the Torah permits the death penalty, the Talmud, in Tractate Sanhedrin, imposes severe limits on capital punishment even where the crime is murder. Contemporary US laws do not meet the standards for fairness and accuracy as articulated in Jewish law. Today we are writing not about the death penalty as a whole, but about proposed forms of execution. Certainly there are members of Jewish communities in states using the gas chamber who support the death penalty in concept or in practice. However, we stand united in opposition to the introduction of the gas chamber as a form of execution. We do not suggest comparisons to the atrocities of Nazi Germany under which millions of our relatives were murdered, many by suffocation in sealed chambers. Still, we cannot imagine it possible that Jewish communities anywhere could stand by while prisoners are executed by the state in our names, using any variation of that mechanism. Therefore, the undersigned Rabbis, Cantors and other leaders the Jewish community call on you to reject the conduct of executions by suffocation in any sort of gas chamber anywhere in the United States.

[inariedwards]

Please sign the petition to demand Alabama (and all other states) to not use gas to execute people.

You can sign from anywhere in the world.

[beardedmrbean]

The state of Alabama is seeking to execute a second inmate using nitrogen gas just weeks after becoming the first in the nation to use the controversial method.

The state's attorney general asked Alabama's Supreme Court to set an execution date for Alan Eugene Miller, who has been on death row since 2000.

He was convicted of killing three people in a workplace shooting.

The UN has condemned the nitrogen gas method as cruel.

In January, the state executed another inmate, Kenneth Eugene Smith, with nitrogen gas. According to reporters at the execution, Smith thrashed violently on the gurney before being pronounced dead 25 minutes later.

While advocates have opposed the method, the state argued it was "effective and humane" and says Miller, 59, will be executed the same way.

Miller was convicted of killing three people - Terry Jarvis, Lee Holdbrooks and Scott Yancy - in 1999 during workplace shootings in Birmingham, Alabama.

"It is once more the appropriate time for the execution of his sentence," Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement.

Miller survived a previous execution attempt by lethal injection in September 2022 as it was called off when it could not be completed by a midnight deadline.

Following the failed attempt, Miller filed a federal lawsuit that alleges prison staff, trying to find a vein, poked him with needles for over an hour and left him at one point hanging vertically as he lay strapped to a gurney.

In November 2022, the state agreed it would not use lethal injection in his execution but instead nitrogen gas.

Ahead of Kenneth Eugene Smith's January execution, the UN, the EU and anti-death penalty activists condemned the use of nitrogen gas for the death penalty. Smith was convicted in 1989 of murdering a preacher's wife, Elizabeth Sennett, in a killing-for-hire.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, said he had "serious concerns this novel and untested method of suffocation by nitrogen gas may amount to torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment".

Inhaling pure nitrogen gas cuts off the oxygen supply to the brain. The procedure had never been used before in an execution, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Besides Alabama, only two other states - Oklahoma and Mississippi - permit execution by nitrogen gas.

Those states approved the use of nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative method of execution because the drugs used in lethal injections have become more difficult to find, contributing to a fall in the use of the death penalty nationally.

[mus1g4]

First a couple of compliments, maybe a comment or two and a couple of questions.

First off, I really like the blog very informative and interesting and well put together. I found the information you provided on electric chair execution very interesting. I also really appreciated you sharing your experience role playing execution experiences. I have always wanted to do that and reading your account of the experience makes me want to do it even more. I also enjoyed you, sharing your experiences with other execution methods, again something I’ve always thought would be fun to experience, well, maybe fun, isn’t the right word. I have always wondered what the experience of all of the most common methods of execution would be like, even more archaic ones that aren’t commonly used today Such as beheading or crucifixion. Thank you for sharing that!

I have always thought it would be a great vacation to do a jail experience and I think it’s really cool that you’re so close to where I’m at, I’m in Minnesota.

Oh, I was particularly taken by your detailed explanation of the execution protocol for the electric chair, and I agree with you, that it would have to be a total mind blowing experience to have that whole process explained to you, especially if it were going to happen for real. Are the question that came to my mind while I was reading that, is, I took special note of the diaper being used (excuse the pun). i’m curious if you can speak to the use or non-use of the diaper in other modes of execution. I have always assumed that it is something that would be employed.

Thank you again for this very interesting block, and, perhaps someday things will work out, and I could come down for a “retreat”.

Thank you very much and nice to meet you.

Diapers are deployed in the gas chamber, electric chair, firing squad, and lethal injection. It is assumed that the executee will lose bowel control.

Since the headsman and guillotine are not used in the US, I can't speak to that!.

I would very much like to throw your ass in a death row cell and watch you sweat as your last hours tick away!!

As an aside, the new nitrogen hypoxia protocol also includes use of a diaper.

[phaeton-flier]

The new Last Week Tonight, the third on executions, is irritatingly varying on quality. "We tracked down the exact company making drugs for federal lethal injections, give solid evidence that they are doing so illegally or at least without any experience or regulation for making drugs for humans" Great! Solid work.

Then we get to the part about Nitrogen inhalation, and its 90% jokes and like two actual arguments about it being painful ("It's no longer approved for euthanization of animals because of reports of dogs making expressions of pain" and "A witness reports it was violent")

I am against the death penalty regardless of method, even a hypothetically instant and painless one. But discussions about the death penalty need to discuss the actual harms and not pretend each method is as torturous as the rest just because admitting one might not be as inhumane as another might convince people it's OK. You mentioned the entire series that inspired the use of Nitrogen gas in Alabama, explain why that method might not work, talk about the issues with getting a good air seal while allowing the executed to have someone with them at the end, talk about issues with hypoxia and unconciousness, don't hit a slam dunk and then miss the free throw.

[chapelbat]

My state performed the first nitrogen hypoxia execution last night and this fact led me to find out we just have a history of botched executions. That’s lowkey hilarious.

[enig-og-tro]

Why does executions have to be so complicated nowadays? Lethal injection? Nitrogen Hypoxia?? What happened to a good ol public hanging? Beheading in front of a crowd? Simple, easy and fun for the whole family

[tedhead]

i think it’s probably important to point out that there’s not a single method of execution that’s been proven to be painless or effective and abolishing the use of nitrogen hypoxia won’t end state sanctioned death by torture in the us

[llort]

Just a little random thought

Biodiversity is suffering

Species are dying out each day

CO2 sequestering and oxygen levels are funky

Deforestation is causing so much harm, and has escalating knock on effects in the future that will be devastating

Non sustainable agricultural practices lead to nitrogen runoff, pesticide/antibiotic water contamination, and growth hormones in the food chain that disrupt millions of peoples endocrine systems There are massive dead zones in the oxygen where hypoxia and anoxia force native species to adapt poorly, of which invasive species can adapt faster and more effectively, replacing the native species, further disrupting the food chain. There is so much potential regarding ecological stability and aesthetic beauty and awe in carrying out land art via the same method of geocaching re XKCD

How about we make the whole fucking planet an international park and protected wild life sanctuary?